5: How you do anything is how you do everything with Nathan Sno from food story media

 Today's guest is Nathan Snow. He's the founder and CEO of Food Story Media, a content and marketing agency operating exclusively in the food, drink and hospitality sector. He spent a decade as a professional chef from cafes in Paris to two and three-step Michelin star kitchens in London, including Morgan mc Claire Smith, Gordon Ramsey's, former right hand.

Food store media has grown. Its Instagram following to over 330,000 with one to 3 million monthly views all entirely organically. They've never paid for an ad or bought a follower, and a hundred percent of their leads come through Instagram or referrals. The business has evolved from serving independent restaurants and chefs to include globally recognised corporate clients.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today's guest is Nathan Snow. He's the founder and CEO of Food Story Media, a content and marketing agency operating exclusively in the food, drink, and hospitality sector. He spent a decade as a professional chef from cafes in Paris to two and three Michelin Star Kitchens in London, including Morgan with Claire Smith, Gordon Ramsay's former right-hand, now running three-star Michelin Star core by Claire Smith. Nathan grew up between Lisburn and West Belfast through the tail end of the troubles. At 19, he left Northern Ireland with a £3,000 credit union loan, moved to Australia with no plan and no contacts. He then spent several years working in kitchens around the world before settling in London and eventually starting FSM. Food Story Media has grown its Instagram following to over 330,000 with 1 to 3 million monthly views, all entirely organically. They've never paid for an ad or bought a follower, and 100% of their leads come through Instagram or referrals. The business has evolved from independent restaurants and chefs to include major corporate clients operating as a team of four. Nathan is deeply invested in personal development. He attends Tony Robbins seminars two to three times per year and trains at least five to six times per week and is openly driven by a mission to leave the hospitality industry better than he found it. So Nathan, thank you for coming. Pleasure to be here. Welcome to our uh new podcast location, just on tour. It's great. Like it? Good spot. Yeah. Um, so you've obviously the co-founder or the or sorry the founder of uh Food Story Media. Um but before we kind of get into the business side and kind of how you've arrived at where you're at currently, um I thought we'd kind of start with the early years. So you split your time between Lisburn and West Belfast. Two pretty different locations. Quite different, yeah. And so how was that growing up?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Yeah, I guess it was it was um contrasting to say the least, in a good way, I suppose, later realizing um Lisburn pretty quiet, pretty calm mostly, um, which was where my mum was based. Dad's based in West Belfast. They were separated for as long as I could remember, so I never sort of experienced that whole thing of having to choose parents or anything like that. It was they had a great relationship and and that was fine. Um, I guess the contrast was more in the environments that that that created. Yes, Lisbon was, I guess, a bit more of a guarded place in one way, never really travelling beyond the three, four streets that you played on as a child, you know, as long as you had your BMX and a few chums to mess around with and a football, you were sort of good to go at any time. Um, quite calm and relaxed, not never too much trouble really around. Or if there was, you never really heard about it or saw it. Belfast, slightly different, still absolutely like incredible sense of community, stronger than the all the alternative that I where I was in Lisburn, like everybody knew each other. It was it was really strong in that sense. You felt within that small radius that it was extremely protected and you know, somewhat unstoppable in a way, but that also came with political intensity too. Yeah, one foot in the wrong direction would have vastly changed the shape of your day, um, which happened, you know, on occasions and and plenty of stories that that I did get to see, and um definitely opened my mind to the reality that not everything is equal, you know. There is a contrast there, and that I guess gave me a lot of perspective on that, and realizing that you're everybody's inherited inherits this world that we don't create, and you don't really realize it until you have something to contrast it to, you know. Um so it gave me a lot of that at a young age, and I didn't really know what to do with it, to be honest, until way much later. But those things are like the the subtle things that come into your childhood that affect the way you think later, you just don't know why or where it comes from, but it makes sense later. I think really what that gave me was the understanding that yes, we all inherit this world we don't create, but you also have an option to either simply allow those environments to shape who you are, or realize your ability to intercept and change the course of their direction. So it gave me that because I knew that there was obviously very different paths you could lead even within each of those environments, equally so 10 million paths that you could lead based on a thousand tiny, tiny little decisions about where you walked, who you spoke to, what you said, you know, all those things. So all had a massive impact, really.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

And your dad sounds like he had a massive influence on your on your life. Uh obviously, you said he's he's from West Belfast, and but he he actually went into peace building and NLP in California, um, and he used to say a serenity prayer to you as a kid. Um when did those kind of stop being words and start being something that you actually used? And how much of an influence was he overall?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, huge influence to be fair. Um yeah, interesting, very, very interesting, man. Very interesting relationship I have with him. A lot of it, you know, is is almost been like mentorship rather than probably a traditional father and son relationship. Um, you know, we've had our ups and downs too, and arguments were probably very similar in lots of ways, which is which can be better sweet. Um but yeah, he I guess he's also had you know his own story that that that I won't go into in de detail, but the first half of his life wasn't so much around peace building, let's say. Um and after I was born, he also found a different path and a a direction that led him into this world of NLP, neurolinguistic programming, which is the study of the mind and linguistics and language, and how we use that to communicate and and understand each other and better be understood. And I remember he he went off to California to study this. Maybe I was like, I don't know, eight to ten, somewhere around that sort of age. And I remember him coming back and like with all these like new things he had learned and like using them on me. I'm quite a self-aware person, even as a child. Like I can kind of sense these things, and I remember saying to him, like, listen, stop using that shit on me. Stop it, it's not gonna work. Leave me alone, keep that for California, whatever, blah blah blah. Um, and he didn't stop, but I think subtly, unconsciously, in a lot of ways, just imprinting that onto my mind definitely had a massive impact in later life because it's I could I later came back to that after I'd gone through my season, let's say. Um so it was all those like little nugget nuggets that I later realized, oh, I actually picked that up from from then. Like that's why I think that way, or that gave me that perspective on that, which isn't which I realize wasn't necessarily normal per se. Um, but yeah, had a had a vast impact, I'd say, on my life and my thought process about the world, more so in the sense of being open-minded, because I met people from all over the world through his work. He started off peace building in Belfast between obviously Catholic and Protestant sides of the community from everything from parliament to paramilitary groups to communities to all sorts, and then took that around the world as well. Spent many years traveling to countries that had been through war or was in war. And I he'd tell you some stories himself, but I remember sharing him sharing things like that of you know, being locked down in a hotel where there's like gunned men outside, not letting anybody leave the room and all this sorts of stuff. But through that, he then brought people from all over the world that have been through these wars and other types of um illegal armies and groups to Belfast. And I had met many of them, you know, black, white, yellow, you know, all sorts of languages and colours and backgrounds and ethnicities, all the all that stuff. And um I was always amazed. They always used to bring me these little gifts and things, and I was like, this is this is class. But that was just like normal. You don't know that you don't know what you don't know. It's like unconscious incompetence. And it was until much later I was like, oh, that was actually that was rare. Like that not not everybody experienced that. Um, and it all started to make sense of why maybe it made me a bit more open to things than others, and why that's um has as been a result of of course the experience I had.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

And it's funny you say just you know, there's certain things that happen at a period of time you don't know at the time that it's shaping kind of how you are as a person and what you'll get to in later life and how it how it all fits in. But it's fun, you know, regardless of the experiences everybody goes through, it kind of all does contribute to the person that you become totally eventually. Good and bad parts. Good and bad. Uh but between 15 to 21, too, it was a bit chaotic. Um and obviously where you were where you were growing up, you've seen kind of your fair share of um people let's say choosing the other paths. So there's you know, people end up in prison, homelessness, addiction. Um what do you think actually it is that made you the one that you know got out of that?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Um well, I was definitely in it, you know. I'm and I am very open and transparent about those times and from the ages of like 15 to 23, probably, was pretty much a bit of a chaotic loop of drugs, alcohol, and per decisions. I don't regret them. They were poor decisions, but I don't regret making them because ultimately they did give me the learning that I have now and I wouldn't have had that otherwise. Um but I think it was like I always had a sense of wanting to do something, wanting some idea of ambition, but never knew necessarily what it was. Um and so I even in those times I was still thinking, you know, some point I will make a switch here. I'll I'll flick the switch and I'll do what I need to do. But yeah, from in that gap it was it was pretty full on. It was um, I think as young men, a lot of them are very driven by significance at that at that age, especially in working class areas. It's it is about significance, it's about you know who's you know drinking the most or doing the most drugs or fighting the most or who you know who's got the whatever shiniest bike. I don't know, you know, all these types of things. It's very much about that because it's animalistic behavior, it's about survival. So, you know, it's not out of nowhere, it's it does come from history of of the strong survive, and that is true also in communities in that world as a as a as a child. So yeah, I got into that and at a certain point started noticing things, these sort of cracks in the facade around me, that it wasn't so much fun anymore. When you you start to see friends going to jail or committing suicide or becoming homeless or becoming like severely addicted, all those types of things that come with that is when I realize okay, this is not what I want it to be. I don't don't see my life going down this road, um, and something needs to change vastly. Um and I couldn't, you know, talking about the serenity prayer that my dad mentioned before about the idea of knowing what you cannot control, you know. Um I couldn't control the environment, but I could change it. So I moved, left, moved to Australia when I was 19. Okay. At that point. Um, and that was that was my way to that was like the pivot moment, I guess. Do you think if you hadn't have it would have gone continued in a bad path? Yeah. Never like um like I always had a strong moral compass of you doing right and wrong, but it was always still this idea of thrill and adventure and stuff like that, which I still absolutely have, tremendously so, but I just channel in a very different area. So if I hadn't hadn't had that experience that took me on a different path, then yeah, probably would have still been in that in that world to some degree. So I think that was definitely the moment that like that shifted me that it was like the start of the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

And this is at 19, so and you have no money here, you get a three grand loan, yeah, and you take off to the other side of the world, no contacts, no job, no plans. So zero. Just but a courage as well to get take yourself out of the environment.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yeah, it was, and I think you know, thinking back to the moment, I can remember very clearly in my own mind at that age, making those decisions and saying, you know, I want to go here. It was it wasn't weird or or that rare in my own head. I wasn't thinking, oh well, I'm too young to be doing this or anything. Now looking back and looking at other 19-year-olds like my nieces 19, I couldn't even imagine her saying, listen, I'm moving to the other side of the world here to do whatever, haven't got a penny. See you later. Seems bizarre, completely bizarre. And uh, you know, my mum and dad let me go, um, which I have to thank them for. I don't know how much control they really would have had over me staying anyway, but uh yeah, it I suppose it did take a bit of courage, but it wasn't even at that point, it wasn't courage to pursue a dream, it was it was courage to decide more of what I was escaping, you know. I wasn't clear on the path of where I was actually going. I just know uh of the one I didn't w wanna follow anymore, do you know? So it was um it was there was still it was still chaos, and it wasn't it wasn't a moment of right, from this point, everything is completely different. There's like lag time, I believe, in any decision. You know, there's the point you decide, and then there's the point that you see the impact of the decision, and it was still it was still a bit chaotic, and I was still you know, finding my feet and figuring things out and build rebuilding a new environment and still involved in in that to a degree for probably four months, three, four months after that. I think that if if I could boil it down to one specific moment that changed in the sense of my ambitions of health and looking after myself, it was was then when I had uh been living with a friend in Melbourne. Everybody shares at that sort of stage, and you meet from backpack and then you move in together and became a best friend of mine. And anyway, walked in the middle of the night, woke me up face down, vomit choking in my own vomit in the middle of the night, and I was like comatosed, had no idea what was going on. Been on a bender for like two days. I'm still 19, body can't really um absorb that those sorts of um things into the body very well, and just it was just not a good place. Don't really remember it, but woke up the next day and he was like, Yeah, threw you into the shower, put you in the bed. And that day was was one of those days that was just it was just silence all day. It was just like in my own head thinking, fuck, this is this is not good, this is the time, things, something actually needs to change here. Because as much as I changed my environment, I didn't change me, you know, and really it doesn't matter where you go, who you talk to, blah, blah, blah, if you don't change who you are, nothing else will really change. And that's probably the stage where I started coming back to the self-development stuff, the idea of this NLP. What is that? What is self-development? What you know, we knew about lifting weights and getting stronger, but this whole idea of mental health, what is that? How do we get better at that? How do we build strength in that? And that was the kind of the start of that journey into that world.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

So that was a conscious decision after obviously quite a significant event, and then you kind of just said, you know what, this has to change, and that's like we were saying, you know, you come back to things that you maybe didn't understand at the time, but then you use for the future. But food was always around that as well. So um you it was it your mum that you eat?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yeah, yeah. Mum was a cook, um, and her mum was also in hospitality. So, you know, she she worked worked my whole life like in in that world, and as I said, I always had a sense of ambition of like wanting to make my own money and get my own way and stuff like that. So I, you know, begged and pleaded for her to give me a job where she was working when I was, I think it was 11, and uh eventually got a job working, washing the dishes, and always very curious about what was going on, you know, what's the chef doing over there, and blah blah blah. And I would have seen her cooking and always asked to be involved in it. I guess that was the one staple across both environments, and you know, from from my my dad's side and my mum's side, my dad's side it was it was his mother, so it was my nan. Um the Sunday was like the day everybody came together. My dad had four brothers, so there was like a lot of them, five five brothers, always they're they're my cousins and everybody there. House was chaotic, everybody arguing, fighting, and all sorts. But when dinner came, that was the moment like everybody shut up and sat down and ate together. Um it was just about yeah, that moment of you know, just breaking bread with people, and no matter what else was going on, you sat down and you had that moment. Um, and and my mum was was on the other side, she was a very passionate cook, you know, always cooked at home, cooked things fresh. Again, didn't realise how um unique that was and special that was until till later, and you're or I would have gone to friends' houses and they were eating these looking smiley faces and things like that, which I was like, what is that? They they're great. Why can't I not eat them? You know, because obviously as a child you do want to eat that sort of stuff, but anyway, again learned to appreciate that, of course, later. Um and yeah, got a job working, washing the dishes, curiosity got the better of me. Used to watch Jamie Oliver every Saturday. That was uh my sort of ritual on a Saturday morning at my dad's house. I would have watched Jamie Oliver and because he was so eccentric and had this personality, he was a bit cooler than the normal sort of chef. It really sparked that sort of bit of creativity. Um and we would have played this sort of game where someone would have cooked on a Saturday and the other the others would have judge scored them on the almost and I'm like you know, a kid, but dead serious about it, you know, completely, you know, don't mess with me. Like everybody get out of the kitchen here. I've got work to do, you know, shopping list, you know, all that stuff. And so I guess it was my sense of creativity and freedom in the kitchen where was I was in complete control of that environment, nobody else, you know. I couldn't control like family dynamics or other stuff going on outside of that or whatever. But like as far as cooking a plate of food that was in front of me, I had complete freedom to do it the way I wanted to do it, whether it was shite or not. Done it, learned from it, and and um had a lot of fun doing it, and that yeah, that evolved, of course.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

And like that evolved to spending a decade in professional kitchens, um, and Michelin star environment and a hundred-hour work weeks, and you've said that that was a key trait. Um but you know, that that environment, obviously it's relentless. It's um you know, being a chef at any standard, particularly Michelin star standard, requires a serious amount of discipline. Do you think that's a good setup then for business? So you obviously then went on to create your own business. Is it that kind of work ethic and thing that that really kind of drove that on into the business side?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah, definitely a big part of it. I think you know, the work ethic thing is something that comes up a lot for sure. Um I think I learned that as well, you know, from being younger, even like seeing my mum had had a strong work ethic and she was working a lot, and as did my dad and stuff. So I seen that and witnessed it young. And yeah, of course, a hundred hours a week teaches you work ethic, but beyond that, I think the the the thing that it gave me more than anything was standards. Because work ethic is you know, you can work long and hard, but standards is a much higher harder thing to learn. The difference between what is good enough and what is great. Um and uh I spent seven years as a chef probably. To a decent standard, but I didn't realise truly what standards were until I moved to London. Okay. And that was that was an eye-opener for me until I started doing internships in these mission star restaurants and around the world. Like I had no idea what standards were. I didn't know I say to people all the time, like I didn't really know how to cook until I moved to London. Um and that, like to give you context, I walk into a a three mission star restaurant in London, fresh off the boat. This is like two weeks in. And uh you know, they've got a stove in the kitchen, like a big stove, everybody cooks around it, and it's stainless steel at the end every day. You clean it. So I was cleaning it, and the chef came over, the Sioux chef came over and absolutely destroyed me in front of everybody. Like, I mean, destroyed me, like screaming in the face, all that sorts of stuff. Uh, because I was scrubbing it the wrong direction. Okay. Because if you I was like, maybe scrub it like this or just like this or whatever I was doing, I can't remember. But you must scrub it like this because you know those sort of scar pads or whatever. The scratches that it leaves must be symmetrical on the stove because that's the standard that is set, which has absolutely no impact on what you're doing from a food point of view or what the customer's getting. But it does have an impact on how you treat everything else.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Because if you could pay that much attention to the way you're scrubbing a stove, then how you treat cooking a steak or a piece of fish or anything for that matter is going to be very different, let's say. So those standards were lot were learned in London and and through the rest of the world when I got into that space, and that definitely transcended into the world of business for sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

And have you brought brought that through your business?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yes, definitely. If anything, having to relearn, I guess, more from a communication point of view, and let's say being more flexible in the kitchen or uh in the business world than in a kitchen, because communication is definitely not one of the skill sets most kitchens have, let's say. Okay. But um, yeah, it definitely it definitely impacts business for sure on a day-to-day basis. It's almost like it's a blessing and a curse, right? Because I don't think the idea of perfect is ever reality, but the idea of excellence and the pursuit of excellence is so it's always that idea of you know, how could we make this better? Are we what are we comparing it to? Because I think that's a problem in most is your comparison. That's how we learn, right? We've learned from something. We say, how is it as good as what we learned it from? But the problem is where are you learning it from? That's the comparison. And so I'm always analyzing the absolute best, whatever I'm trying to do, whether it's in the gym or it's in business or it's cooking dinner or it's whatever. What is the absolute best in that area and how far away are we from that? Because I don't really care about Stevie down the road and what he's doing. Like, I don't care if I'm better than him. That's not interesting or exciting to me. Who's the best in the world at that thing? And like, what can we learn from them? And and that's really the standard piece. I think that's what allowed us to do what we do.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

And you apply that throughout all areas of your life?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yeah, keeps me up at night.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

I would say that keeps you up at night, all right. That's because you know, although that's if you have a r an exceptionally high standard, I mean, it obviously it then will translate through to the business sense because if you're that meticulous about pretty much everything you're doing, it will work because you're spent the attention to detail and the the persistence of it and and kind of always striving to be that much better. And that, you know, like whilst you're saying that it's learned in a Mitchell and Stor kitchen, but again, it comes back to that thing that you know it's those traits that you have that then go on, and they're transferable into pretty much like you say, fitness, fitness, running a business, you know, personal life. Everything is is kind of set to the same standard then.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yeah. So the way you do something is the way you do everything. You know. Very good. Um but it's also hard that like that's definitely not that's definitely not the easiest way to live, that's for sure. It's not the same thing, do you know? There's definitely like lots of challenges that also creates too. But you wish you could turn it off at times. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. For sure. But I you can you can't have everything, do you know? Do you you know choose your poison?

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah, yeah. And so just on the on the food story media side, so you've it's obviously tremendously successful. The list of clients that that you have are just unreal. And they now include the Mitchell and Star restaurants that that you can some of them you trained with, and like Claire Smith, you you kind of worked with as well, and now you kind of work collaboratively with um over a long period of time. And you've grown that to now 330,000 followers, um, and you've never run any ads, so that's all been kind of consistency gross the whole way through.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Storytelling, really, understanding the people we're trying to speak to. Um and again, my obviously my past was a big benefit to understanding that because I came from that world, you know, I was in the trenches of the same people that we're speaking with, you know, so that there's a level of understanding from me to them, but also respect that I I know where they've been and I don't know where they are and the challenges they face and and so on and so forth. So I guess it was really getting very, very specific on who we're speaking to.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Um when you say that in terms of an ideal client, let's say, or who is it you're trying to attract, is it that what you mean?

SPEAKER_00 28:14

So yeah, good question. In that sense, we actually went a different direction. A lot of businesses will go into it thinking, how do we attract our customers? Very directly, quite a one-lane tunnel. But the perspective I took was how do we influence the decision makers? Not just how do we attract the decision makers, but how do we influence the people that that influence the decision makers? Okay, because that's a much wider pool of people. Um so obviously, let's take a restaurant, for example, it'll be either the restaurant owner or the head chef who probably makes a right key decision in that, but of also there's a brigade of other people that work in hospitality. So our strategy towards marketing and content from a social media perspective was how do how can we impact them? How can we bring value to them? And as a result, they will share our message, you know, whenever the opportunity arises for something that we can support them with from a business perspective, we'll be the first one to come to mind because we've given them value first, first and foremost, always. It's like, what can we do for them? How can we inspire, educate, or entertain them and connect with them on a deeper level? It's all like an emotional perspective as opposed to simply logical and practical. I'm this and I sell this. It's much deeper than that psychologically. It's just being able to connect with someone truly on online so that they know you know their world. Like that's the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

And this one of the biggest clients that you have, you actually find because one of their employees brought one of your videos to and passed it the whole way up. Um, so it's exactly what you were just talking about, is that yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Which I yeah, I mean, funny story. Uh Unilever, is who you're talking about, right? Like $70 billion company. Funny story. I had absolutely no idea who they were whenever I had the sales call. Uh, not until after one of my staff said, I was like, Oh yeah, just spoke to these guys, you unile something. I was like, Is it must be a university company or something? And they were like, Unilever, this this $70 billion conglomerate from whatever. It's like, oh, right, yeah. Um, and it wasn't until much later until they actually told me that I met the chef that the that watched the video that shared it, and she said, Oh, yeah, that's that's how we're working together. I watched one of your videos on social media and I shared it with such and such, and they shared it with the marketing director and blah blah blah. And that's how it happened. And they're our our biggest clients and done endless amounts of work with them, traveled all over the world with them, done incredible things, and they're yeah, really, really great client from all angles.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

And that's what you mean. The difference between kind of the approach, the standard approach, let's say, is like, okay, how do we talk to our individual client?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

But it's definitely much broader than that, in the sense of we've we've up until like so so for six years, we never mentioned once that we sell a product on social media. And that probably says more than I could.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

And that's intentional?

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Intentional because it was value-driven, it was community-based, it was building connection first of giving something before we ask for something. Do you know? I think relationships matter more than anything. So building a relationship like it is, you know, historic history uh uh teaches us this. It it's it started and you know, if you had something to sell, uh a goat, a carpet, a gold, silver, you would have gone to the market and you'd have told people about it. But you know, it it this the same applies now. They just the market is in social media, that's where the attention is. And so that's where you need to be able to communicate and build relationships.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

And so just building on that, like, to it can you engineer hype or do you you know can you manufacture it, or does it have to be, you know, is it is there a way, like a method that you think that is the best way to kind of build a let's say a culture of because there's a lot of restaurants and and hospitality businesses that kind of become a bit of a like a cultural phenomenon. Um and is that something that you think can be built?

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Yes. Um very dependent on the brand itself. I think the number one thing I think there's three pillars really. Three four core pillars, let's say, is number one the skill. So you need the the skill of the thing that you do or sell. The next most important thing is the story, which a lot of people don't go to that part, they just go to the sales part. So you need the skill, but then you need the story about the skill, which is the part that differentiates you from everybody else in the market, like by meaning, by the the word decision is is to cut away from. You're asking someone to to cut away others to choose you. So if you're not being really, really, really clear on what the thing is that they're cutting away from, it's almost impossible to make a decision. And there is the moment that people then end up making decisions based on cost, and you become a commodity, and that's just a game of failure that you don't want to play because you're fighting with the low end of the market there, and there is it's much harder to succeed in that. So I think the the way to do that and how you differentiate is being obsessed by understanding what your narrative is, what your story is, and what makes you very different to everybody else. Yeah. So I think that's number one of being able to generate hyper community or brand.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

This is the thing that Apple are very good at, and that they device is absolutely non-reachable. I know, and it's it's this is what we do.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Absolutely borderline, no difference from the 10 that came before it. But you know, it's comes from Apple, so I'll trust them. But they built that, they built that trust because people more so now than ever buy identities more than products. Yeah. So that's why you know you go to your favorite coffee shop, and yeah, of course, you you you appreciate good cook good coffee, but to a certain extent, once you read a certain level, like it's all pretty decent, you know, if you're going to those sorts of places, it's why you pie. You know, it's five quid for a matcha, frappa, latino, whatever it is. You know, it's it's that idea of being in a place that has a vibe, a sense, a community, a type of character of people that go to that place or or have Apple. Of course, it was for the creatives. That's where the the original from. What was the what was the line? Um the original sort of marketing line Steve Jobs says about um the challenge in the status quo was one. Yeah. Um for the ones these this is for the crazy ones. For the for the something and for the misfits, was it? Yeah, something like that about the the the creative ones. Anyone else remember that? No. I'll have come back to that.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

But it's but yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. And that but they they literally went whole into that, and they were sort of very genuine about we are this, we are not that.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Um, and that so in terms of a restaurant, do you think the more authentic a finder is and how much kind of influence they put on their place, the the the more that comes across? Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Um yeah, you'll see it in in in younger demographic businesses now, they'll have a more of an understanding of the social media landscape and that that space, I think, that you have to either learn to play that game or you'll get left out of the game now, more than ever. Um absolutely critical because otherwise, you know, they're all buying the same products from the same suppliers, half of them are the same staff that have worked in the other one. So beyond that, and you know, of course, I can write, you know, such and such in my menu, it's different than yours, but he can copy you and whatever, like you know, those sorts of things. Very easy to replicate, but the one thing that is impossible to replicate is your story. That's the only thing. I can buy everything else, I can hire every anybody else, I can't live the life you've lived. And so that's the the primary piece of what your narrative is.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

And you've said that tell your your story is your superpower, right? Um, and for a business owner listening who thinks that their story isn't interesting enough, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

For some of the things their story isn't interesting enough, I think there's probably a lot of um psychology involved in it, really. So it's I think everybody has a story, a very interesting story. They just might not know how to tell it the best way. Um, but I guarantee everybody has a story. Um, and if they're in a place of business, it's probably had a big impact on getting them there. But most people are not marketers, you know, they come in exceptional at this one skill, but of course, we're in a world now of the boom of entrepreneurship, which in many cases you have to be, of course, this skill, but you also have to be a marketer, you have to be EHR, you have to be all these other things and wear all these other hats. Um so I think, yeah, that's a key part of doing that work, and you know, it's not a matter of just Googling something or figuring it out on AI, although it probably would be a big resource for many people now. But yeah, I think everybody has a story, and it's just they just need a little bit of help and the right questions to ask to articulate it in the right way of figuring it out because it is that it's almost it is therapeutical. Like I ran a course last year for Unilever actually, and there was like 35 chefs on it, and half of them came up to me after offline and were like, this was like incredible, this felt like therapy, like figuring out why I do things and where that came from and why I say this that way, and what do I not believe, and what do I believe? Because we're all shaped by our beliefs. The thing is that we we don't actually we don't know what our our true beliefs are because we don't really question them. You know what I mean? They're they're they're that unconscious, they're just there. So until someone asks you the those questions that makes you think, oh, why do I think that about that, or you know, such and such, you don't really know the answers. So that's essentially what a lot of we do with food story media is being able to bring those stories out of people and help them differentiate online.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Is there is there a process that you go through to and it can it be tough for for business owners to kind of go through that?

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Yes. Um yeah, it can. There's definitely a process. Um it'll cost you 20 grand to go through it. Um yeah, it is the tough yeah, yeah. No, there is definitely a process. Um and it is tough. It is definitely tough because it's it's not very tangible at the beginning. You know, they're like, how many sales does this get me? You know, the traditional business mind would view it like what is I put this in, what do I get back? Brand is quite a hard one to place in that spectrum. Do you know? It's it is a long game, but it is the only asset you truly own is your reputation. Everything else can be taken away. So I believe it's the most valuable asset, the most valuable investment is your brand, be it personal or business. Um absolutely critical in this day and age, more than ever. And you know, I'm probably one of the few that like practice what I preach in that sense. Like I preach it, but like I also practice it daily. Like I have a team and we're always very focused on as much as what we're doing as a brand as we are of what we're delivering for a client brands as well. Because it you know, you wouldn't let an overweight guy take you to the gym and tell you to get you into the best shape of your life. And I believe the same rules apply for for whatever it is that I'm saying that I'll do for you. If I haven't done it for myself, then who am I? You know.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

And it but we've gone through a similar exercise and we started off with they started our marketing team, I started asking us questions like, what do you stand for? What's your vision? What's this? Right. There were a whole lot of questions that we really couldn't answer. Right. And we kind of then realized that we didn't really have anything behind the brand as such. Um and it was a really difficult process because it, you know, we thought we were kind of doing all the right things and doing everything. And whenever we actually looked at it by the time, we're like, we're going about this completely the wrong way. That's completely not, and we have to change everything. And it was really, really painful because we had to change start to finish how who we were serving, what clients, how we did it. Um, and it caused a huge amount of um like soul searching almost to actually find out what what it is we should be and where we should go. And um, so I can imagine for you for your clients, if they particularly they tend to be quite passionate people. Yeah. So if they're then having to come out and go, Right, what is it? Are we communicating it the right way? It must take a huge amount of time for you to challenging as well.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Like, you know, I I challenge people, challenge people's beliefs because you don't really know what they are truly until they are challenged, until you have to dig deep and and um and ask those questions internally. Where does that come from? Because it's not like personal and business, they are the same thing. Your business is absolutely directly related to you as a person and individual. Business is a spiritual game, I believe, and there's no there's no separation of the two in that sense. It's all rooted in your own psychology as a founder. Um, whether it's a founder or an employee, it's like it's it's deeply rooted connected, I believe. So it's just like figuring out what those what those dots are that match. Why is this important to me? What am I actually really selling? It's not water or you know, looking after your accounts, it's like it's much more than that. It's it's it's peace in this or it's what connection in that. It's it's much deeper because I think we all as humans have the same needs, you know, be it connection, contribution, growth, variety, certainty, these are the the same that we all have. And just figure out like what are what in those am I really selling? Because that's that's what we're buying.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

And like like you're saying about the attention, although the the scru the scrubbing marks was not the thing. Yeah. But like you're saying, it's how you do that, it's how you do everything. So, you know, if you pay that much attention to those small things, yeah, you know, and how you actually then serve your clients and make sure that they're you're doing everything to the best of your ability. It obviously then takes the not the risk out of business, but it makes It gives it the best chance of success. You know?

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yeah. Rarely is any win or failure related to one decision. Right. It's like a thousand macro decisions. Absolutely. The habits, right? Not not that one moment that you know, we think, oh, this this one decision's gonna change everything. Rarely is it. Yeah. It's like where you are now is in direct relation to everything you've done in 12 months prior.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Do you think a lot of business owners miss that though?

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Yes. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

They they kind of go, I don't understand why I'm in this position. And you're like, this is a culmination.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

I think a lot of that as well is because as a founder, it can be a lonely journey. Um it can be, absolutely. And you you don't have anyone to answer to a lot of the time. So you and the book sort of step stops with you unless you're intentionally seeking that out, which is like I'm even with my team, like I'm always like telling them, like, please do if you see it a different way, like challenge me, tell me the way you see it. I ask them, what do you think? Like, that is a key thing. If any qu any question I could say is the most valuable from a team perspective, it's just that just that. What do you think? You're not making the decision, I'm just asking you what you think. It's going to impact and influence how I perceive the grand picture of it all, because a lot of the time I'm like here on this in this moment of this world with my the the tunnel vision of my life experience that's led me there. But one thought or perspective from someone else that has lived a completely different life could could entirely shape the way I see it, and has done many times, you know. Um not even sure how we got on to that point, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

And but it but it is true though, if you don't take other people's perspectives, you'll design it the way you think it should be designed, yeah, and you'll miss entire kind of aspects of it. I do remember having a conversation with and uh to to be fair, it I'm not saying that it it's a male problem, but there was three males and a female, and we were discussing kind of a change to the business or whatever. And we were like, yeah, we have it solved, we knew exactly what we were doing, and whatever. And the the the girl the the woman that was with us kind of turned around and said, Yeah, but that that doesn't work for women. And we were like, Well, why? And she just explained something very basic, I can't remember even what it was. We would have totally missed it. And the the whole thing, we would have cut entire 50% of the population and just by one mistake we had made, we're totally lying to it, couldn't have seen it.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah, I think that that just that accountability and and seeking perspective, sometimes hard as well for people because they feel that it might be weak to ask what do you think? Or it might, you know, people might fear oh, they're gonna think I'm not gonna know what I'm doing if I ask them. Again, very psychology-based stuff of internal work that needs to be done there. I think some of the best things I've done and decisions I've made have come as a result of the conversations I've had with other people that have impacted, impacted it, or guided me or mentored me, or questioned me, or challenged me in some way. And I think that's a big piece of why I'm involved in the you know, going to the seminars and the different groups outside of that and building a community of strong people who understand my world as well in the game of business and health and stuff. I think that's really, really important. Yeah, really, really important.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Like you're saying, it it can be a lonely place running a business. So the more that you can interact with other people and what are you doing and how do you do that? And you know, the learnings that come from that's really important.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Critical. Yeah, even the time away from business, like often like it. The best idea is when I'm on a walk or in the gym or running or like hard spitting through the roof. You suddenly think, oh yeah, because you've had a moment to step away from it, you know, and it it's hard to see things sometimes when you're so focused on it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

And obviously, there's a what would you say, a social media thing to uh uh to entrepreneurial entrepreneurialism at the moment, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Um but do you think people kind of sort of misunderstand what it is or how much work it's going to be?

SPEAKER_00 48:19

Yeah. Um I think I mentioned to you before there, just before we started recording, like everybody wants to be successful until they realize what getting successful looks like. And I don't even see myself as successful, like not even to a small degree. I've got so much more I want to do and achieve, but to the small amount that I've had is being an absolute roller coaster, like an absolute roller coaster, and has never been linear. It is never linear, it's like this, as you know yourself, do you know? Um, and I think it's great. Look, I think it's it's incredible that people want to do things and and build things. It's it's it's inspiring to see, and certainly what appears to be a really much healthier culture around health, well-being, business compared to a decade ago. Yeah. Um, but obviously there's a naivety that comes with that too, like all things until you know there's the stages of learning, as we said, unconscious incompetence when you don't know what you don't know, which is at the start where you know it's easy to have an idea, very easy, and everybody, you know, we all probably know people, I'm sure someone that's like, Oh yeah, I had that idea five years ago, great, but you didn't do it, do you know? And it there's a difference between having an idea and doing the thing. Yeah. Um, and that's when you once you decide to do the thing and you get into doing the thing, then you realize, oh, you don't know, or you you you then know what you don't know, and it's like, oh shit, there's a whole world out here that I have absolutely no idea about. Um which a lot of the time is is is is there, but and I experienced that because I went from you know working a hundred hours in a kitchen cooking food to building a business in the world of marketing. Absolutely no idea about any of it. Still don't really, but it's worked out all right. Like I figured things out along the way, but like had absolutely no idea about it. But I think it's just that relentlessness of if you really want to do it, you you're gonna figure it out anyway. Um, even with cooking, like going back before that, I did study cooking, but when I stepped into a real kitchen, maybe two percent of that knowledge was was applicable. There's a difference between reading the recipe book and and cooking the recipe. It's not the same thing, you know? Yes. Um yeah, the the the reality versus the dream.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

And there's no shortcuts to it. No. You just unfortunately you have to make the mistakes and you have to have the learnings, and you know, that's kind of what leads to it.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

But it's the persistence. The persistence in just not making the same mistake twice. Really? The first time it's a mistake, the second time it's just laziness, stupidity. Do you know? It's that's probably where my le less patient side comes in. With myself as well, do you know, frustrated?

SPEAKER_02 51:19

It's um hospitality in general, right, is a tough sector. Yeah. Right. Um Do you think that there's there's anything that can be done to make that, you know, from a business if if you were advising somebody to go on to hospitality, what would you kind of say to them in terms of listen, don't do this, don't do this. Uh just to try and give them the best chance of success.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

Yeah, it's talk about we talked about hype there before. The hype thing is interesting because it's it's not tremendously difficult to create hype at the beginning. Like to have talking about hospitality businesses, it it's actually not that hard to fill a restaurant at the start. To fill a restaurant on opening, it takes good marketing. To fill a restaurant after a year of it being open, it takes a good restaurant. To be full and busy and successful beyond two years, you need to be dangerously good at both. I don't think enough people prioritize the marketing piece. I say it all the time, it doesn't matter how good you are if nobody knows you exist. And I've seen it many, many times, both in the world of hospitality and food business as a chef. I've seen exceptionally talented chefs and cooks feel miserably, lose restaurants, go bankrupt, the list goes on, life falling apart. Because they, as much as they had the product and the skill of that, they didn't know how to communicate it, they didn't know what their story was, they didn't prioritize that. They simply just thought if I'm good enough, they will come, and that's not true in this day and age because you can lose to someone else very easily that's great at marketing but doesn't have the same degree of skill whatsoever. Um so I think that's the number one thing for sure, and you can't you it's not one or the other, like you need to be great at both. So I would be prioritizing that, and as you know, we may get into it, but I am gonna be open in a food business, so that's like I'm I'm I'm saying openly what I'm doing right now, and that's that's the biggest piece is knowing clearly what the the community I'm attracting. It's not customers anymore. For me, a successful brand and business has community first. Yeah, you know, it's not just customers, it's the idea of the community of of what you're creating around it, the narrative around that, the identity that you're that you're shaping, and the beliefs that you as a person, individual, and brand are sharing with the world. People need to know what they're choosing. You know, that's why you choose your favorite restaurant or your favorite aftershave or your favorite whatever it is, coffee spot. It's an identity piece. So I think that's that's the number one thing.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

And like we you it is true because it's just rolling through, you can think of you know, there's a lot of restaurants start with hype or bars or anything, any of those, uh any of them, and fade. And then they fade, and somewhere else becomes the the spot. And so it is really, really difficult to sustain, but that's identity if they have it from the start.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

It's human behavior, like we're we're obsessed with novelty, so we're gonna go to the new thing and try it out. Like it's that's not hard. That doesn't I think this is the an idea of um hospital, I call it the hospitality honeymoon, which is like this fallacy of a being busy at the beginning is an indicator that you're a successful or a great business. It's not true at all for that reason, because it's easy to fill a restaurant at the start, it's not hard. Everybody's gonna come anyway. But whether they come back again, it's a completely different question. You know, that's that's the product piece, that's the skill bit of are you who you say you are. You just want people the one piece is the marketing of telling them who you are, and then the experience piece when they come and experience the product or service you're offering, when they decide, okay, is this is this correct? Is this are they as good as they say they are? Because you know, it you need to attract people, but you also need to get them back. Acquisition is just as important as retention. If you if you never lost a single customer, I'm sure most businesses would be multi-million dollar businesses. But but they're not.

SPEAKER_02 55:56

I think we're finishing this because you kind of led me into it anyway. Um what's next then? So you kind of touched on it there, but what's what's next for Nathan?

SPEAKER_00 56:08

Um yeah, so I'm uh I'm not gonna I won't go into depth into depth.

SPEAKER_02 56:13

You've got to just tease enough.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

Yeah, I suppose going through that full circle, you know, of my own challenges and experiences through life and and and so on, and then business, like the root of all that has been health in terms of where I am now. Like I said, I have so much more that I want to do and achieve and and give to this world. Um, but the core, I believe, of what's given me that is has been the change in health physically and mentally. Um and as someone that prioritizes that now vastly in my life. I don't like having to decide between eating out and eating healthily. So that's what I'm gonna change.

SPEAKER_02 57:02

Okay. And you're gonna leave it at that? I'm gonna leave it at that. Excellent. Listen, Nathan, been an excellent guest. Thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 57:12

Thank you. Cheers.