James: 90% of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are. And I really like that, because I think it’s distilled down into as few words as possible. But the real point there is you have to be confident and you have to be humble. You have to be authoritative and you have to be open, and you have to be all of these conflicting things all at once.

Ben: Hey, thanks for listening. We’ve been starting, growing and leading businesses for over 50 years between us. Along the way, we’ve met lots of amazing people doing the same. We started to collect their wisdom, things they’d seen, real experiences that had taught them something, things they’d read that had inspired, and things they’d learned, the principles they’ve applied in growing their businesses. We call these Founder Hacks — the real experiences of real entrepreneurs growing real businesses. And this podcast is to share them with you. Welcome to Founder Hacks.

Ben: Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of Founder Hacks, our podcast where we like to investigate and interrogate learning from brilliant founders and entrepreneurs, and serve them up for you, dear listener, as inspiration for your own journey. Let me start, as always, by saying hello — how have you been, Antony Enright?

Antony: Hi guys, yeah, good to see you all. Very well, keeping warm in this cold time.

Ben: Keeping warm — we are recording during the cold snap of 2026, so we’re all wrapped up in jumpers. And of course an equally huge welcome to Mr Alex Moore. Alex, what have you been up to, sir?

Alex: Yeah, reading, reading, playing around with apps that teach you things — instead of doom-scrolling, apps, like the gamification of knowledge, very interesting, that’s what I’m doing.

Ben: Oh dear, I’m worried now.

Alex: Driving everyone mad about how much I love it. Bring it all in, I know a lot about the Roman Empire.

Ben: Wow, hopefully we’ll be talking about — some questions will come up about the Roman Empire maybe, we never know, we do range into all sorts of places on Founder Hacks, and who knows where we could end up today. But today we also have a wonderful guest — we’re super excited to welcome James Bates. Now James started his career in finance, in his early career contracting with banks, and took huge inspiration from that about what he didn’t want to do for the rest of his career. Instead, took inspiration from his entrepreneurial mum, who ran cafes and catering businesses, including serving up dinner for rock stars at Pier Studios. James then took the plunge and became the founder of QVO Hospitality, now incorporating six sites, including Maray, the One O’Clock Gun, and the Buyers Club, with huge plans ahead to expand, which I’m sure we’ll hear more about. We’re totally stoked to have him — huge welcome, please, for James Bates. Welcome, James, how are you?

James: Yeah, I’m very good, thank you — what a welcome, really good. Yeah, I’m very excited about the year ahead, and it’s not as cold up north, actually.

Ben: There’s the clue for all of us, us softy southerners — perhaps it is the same, we’re just a bit more vulnerable, I don’t know, you said it, who knows. Well, look, James, I know you’ve done some amazing thinking and I’ve got some fantastic stuff to share with us today. I believe your theme was something around discomfort — do you want to give us a little hint about what’s to come in terms of your learning?

James: Yeah, so I think the nature of entrepreneurship and running a business is that you have to live in discomfort for quite a bit of the time. And if you get the rewards from it, then the discomfort is very much worth it. When you’re living in discomfort for too long, you potentially need to change something — it’s a really good indicator of character, I think. And when I look around at the people I admire the most, they are the people who live in the discomfort and then come out the other end of it and learn something from it. It’s no good just sitting in discomfort indefinitely, because you’re just going to end up stressed and unhappy. But if you keep learning and finding new things to get uncomfortable about, and live in discomfort — for me, that speaks a lot to my journey over the last coming up to 12 years now of running my business.

Ben: Amazing, amazing — well we look forward to learning about all the new discomfort we can leverage from you. But without further ado, as ever, we would love to hear, James, what have you seen that’s taught you something?

James: So yeah, what I’ve seen — I went to see a friend recently, he’s pivoted away from what was a highly successful business he ran for 15 years. The market in his particular business has changed unrecognisably in the last five years — consumer behaviour, economic environment, the cost base, the whole shebang really, meant his business really was not sustainable, through no fault of his own, a very good business person. So he’s honed in on a new business that he can use all the things he learned over 15 years of his previous business to try and make a success of. And the thing that struck me, and the reason I wanted to bring it to this conversation today, is because I left that meeting — we were with each other about an hour and a half, had a couple of coffees — I left convinced it was going to be a success. And my follow-up thought was, well, why am I so convinced? It got me really thinking. So I looked at the product he’s selling, and the product is good, but is it best in class? It maybe isn’t, but it’s good. He’s pretty good at marketing, but again I don’t think that’s his USP. His team are really great, but again I didn’t feel like that was it. So I wondered what was it, and I think what I landed on is it’s because I know he’s willing to do things others aren’t — and what I mean by that is, I feel like he has the resilience and the self-belief and the ability to sit with that discomfort for a longer period than others. I think we can often get a bit obsessed with founder stories, and we leap straight from day one to whatever day the exit is, and don’t really concentrate much on the middle bit. Antony and I have discussed this quite a lot in the past, that the path can seem like it was very linear and almost fated, because you don’t hear the stories of — for every one person who succeeds, the 5,000 people who fail, right. So, to clarify — what I’m not talking about is he’s going to do 100 hours a week, although he would if he needed to. What I’m really talking about is getting comfortable in the discomfort, not making ego-led decisions, obsessing over the small details, and being willing to let go of an idea very quickly that isn’t working. So the thing that really got me thinking was how much, especially at an SME, how much of a success is really down to the character of the founder. And I wondered how much of that is teachable, because I’m not a coach, Antony’s a coach, he could maybe speak a bit more to it than I could, but I think certain things are teachable and certain things are very much personality-led and character-led. I just found it really interesting that I was so convinced it was going to be a success, to the point that if he did a crowdfunder or something, I’d throw it in — and I’m quite a pragmatic person, I’m not somebody who gets overexcited and goes, oh you’ve got this great idea, I’m sure it’s going to be a huge success. So I thought that would be a really interesting one to bring as my scene, because my key takeaway was he’s going to be sitting in discomfort for longer than other people, he’s going to learn his lessons, and then he’s going to sit in his discomfort for a little bit longer. So I wonder, would anyone — Antony, maybe you could speak a little to that?

Antony: Yeah, you kind of set me up there, so I’ll definitely come in, and I completely agree with you — I think it’s a fascinating scene, and there’s one thing I’d like to pick up on in a moment, but for me I think it’s absolutely character. I think the problem is that for a lot of people, as you said, a lot of people who see entrepreneurs can think it’s this wonderful environment, this really sexy sort of thing to go and start your own business, and be so unaware of the things required and the character required to overcome the challenges you face. And one thing I wanted to pick up on is you said letting go of an idea that isn’t working — because if you can do that as an entrepreneur, I think, goodness, you’ve got it, that’s a real differentiator. Because so many people come in with an idea for a product or service, and when you speak to them, what they had from day one, when you meet them in year two, year three, actually the product or service has generally changed, or it’s not what they thought it was going to be. And that’s so often the case for most of us — you go in with this idea that this is what it’s going to be, or this is who the core customer is, and two years later you find the core customer is completely different. And the only way you get to that point is by being humble enough to go, I got that bit wrong, I’ve got to let go of that idea and come up with the next one. And I think that’s essential to the character required to be a successful entrepreneur. What do you think, Ben?

Ben: I really relate to it. I still remember, in one of my first leadership gigs, it was a really tough situation we were dealing with, and the office toilet got blocked, and the whole team were running around going, oh what are we going to do, there’s no toilet — and I went and unblocked the toilet, because that’s what needed to be done, that was the thing getting in the way of the business that day was a blocked toilet. I put my rubber gloves on and sorted it, and I think I recognise that will to go where is necessary without pause or resistance, because it’s necessary, and you’ve got to go there in small ways and big ways. So I totally relate. The other thing I was thoughtful about, as James, when you shared that, was — can you learn it? It’s really interesting, I reckon I’ve probably seen a lot of people learn it the hard way — it’s the thing you could never say when someone pitches a business to you, are you going to do that, because that is what it takes. But then equally I recognise there’s a journey of learning yourself, because there might be aspects that are necessary — if I can be humble enough to go, I know I’m not great at the detail sometimes, certain aspects, I’m brilliant at other aspects, I always want to have someone on my team who’s brilliant at that. I will try and recognise my own character and its deficiencies, and fill them through people. But definitely, what you described there, it sounds like what you’ve got to do, right, I can’t see there’s any way around that.

Ben: Interesting, interesting — how about yourself, James, do you recognise this in yourself?

James: There’s a question. Well, yeah — I’m an expert at my own perspective, and it’s very difficult to put yourself in other people’s shoes. I would love to think running a small business is probably one of the most accessible careers out there, right — none of us need to have gone to, you know, the London School of Economics and got a master’s, that’s not a prerequisite, in some businesses that would actually harm, right. So I’d say having an idea is a prerequisite, having a bit of confidence to execute is a prerequisite. I think probably what we’re talking about is an enduring business — a business going on for five, ten, twenty years. I think founding a business probably requires one set of skills and ideas and energy, but then to run and endure in business — Jim Collins speaks a lot about it in his book, Good to Great — the premise of that book is all about these businesses, some of them become unicorns, and why do they become unicorns, what’s the differentiator. So I think there’s a difference between having an idea, setting something up, and having a business that endures and lasts. And that theme we’re talking about today, about feeling comfortable with discomfort — you probably don’t actually need that for the first five or six years, because you’ve got adrenaline, you’ve got success, you’re getting a bit drunk on winning awards and all that sort of thing, which is lovely — but after ten years, you know, we’ll put ourselves forward for some awards this year, I’m sure, and if we win one I’d probably be quite pleased, but I would describe it as a very fleeting feeling. That kind of stuff doesn’t become enough any more, right — those small little bits of societal reward. People say, it must be really great to run a business — maybe when we were a few years in, they’d say, I’ve been to your restaurant, the food’s great — don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy it when people say that, but the impact probably lasts far less than it used to, you don’t get as high on that stuff any more.

Ben: Very cool. Well, look, we better move on, I’m sure we could talk much more about this, but I believe your next couple are going to build on this theme. James, we’d love to hear — what have you read that’s been a source of inspiration around this discomfort?

James: So yeah, there’s a substack by a guy called Jonathan Raymond — he’s an author, got a couple of books out, but I really enjoy his substack because he doesn’t send a lot of them, but when he does, they’re really worth reading. This particular one I picked out was around AI — and I think we’ll get to the theme of discomfort. His point starts around — we spent a century organising our entire civilisation around the capacity for cognitive supremacy. He speaks about the results being a miracle, which they are — we live in an age where wars, disease, general safety, we’re basically as safe as we’ve ever been, certainly in the developed world, I know we speak from a place of privilege there. His point is that we’ve sort of topped out at the level of security, and the feeling he has, and suspects many of us have, is that we live in a world that feels very safe but also a little bit sanitised and slightly hollow, and it’s definitely something I can relate to. He speaks about the chasm between the ability to do and the ability to be. I really like that saying, because you can get a bit obsessed trying to become a productivity machine, trying to optimise everything — optimise health, optimise sleep, if you’re wearable on at night and check your sleep score, all these things around optimisation, almost treating ourselves as machines, and you see extreme examples of that. His point is that AI has arrived, and can now out-analyse, out-think and out-produce us, so it’s taken away that cognitive supremacy we took as the thing that separated us from the rest of the animal kingdom. His point is that it’s a gift, because the thinking was never the path home. I really like that, because I got very interested in a lot of eastern philosophy probably going back about 15 years, spent quite a bit of time in India and Thailand, and I think they’ve got a lot of stuff right when it comes to left brain, right brain use — if you went to India or Thailand they’d tell you, well of course it never was, and they’d talk about meditation, and being a lot more switched on to self, self-actualisation. So the danger being that the seductive lie was that the output was the goal. And the danger also lies in using AI to avoid making mistakes and failing — there’s a real big risk in that. When we talk about the theme of discomfort today, we now have something that lives on our phone, on my tabs when I open Chrome, that can take away a lot of my discomfort and problems, take away a lot of my thinking. Really, for a century now we’ve acted as if we were thinking machines, we touched on that a bit with trying to optimise ourselves, sleep scores, and actually, is this now a time to move from transaction to transformation, from efficiency to efficacy, from appearing wise to being wise. He finishes off — and this is the real point of me bringing this to our conversation — before you delegate to AI, pause and ask, is the value of this in the results or in the struggle? If the value is in the output — organising data, format a report — great, delegate it. But if the value is in the struggle, whether that’s finding your voice, or sitting with the discomfort of not knowing, then stay in the room and sit with that discomfort, because the risk, as I see it, is if you don’t sit with the discomfort, and you outsource that discomfort to a large language model, then you’re not going to do that learning. And we spoke earlier about how the only value of discomfort is to learn from it, and then move on to become uncomfortable in another problem, not just continual discomfort. So yeah, I really like that bit — staying in the room, sitting with the discomfort, and really finding your voice, and just trying to understand the delegation — using these tools is useful up to a certain point, and after that it’s going to be counterproductive.

Ben: There’s so much there, that’s a very rich area you’ve opened up, James. It’s so interesting — it’s so strange because, today, for the first time ever, we had to say no to a hiring decision because of AI, because someone overused AI in an assessment process — really interesting, first time it’s happened. And the hiring manager said, well, no, because the point of the exercise was to see your thinking, and that point’s being completely dismissed because this person didn’t do any thinking. And that caused the line manager to make an assessment on that basis, I thought it was really interesting.

James: I hope you told that person, by the way.

Ben: I believe so, I literally just heard this.

James: Really interesting that actually we felt the approach taken here was too much — conversely, there was also the line said, well, if he hadn’t used AI at all, he might question. So his view was, what I’m looking for is, yes, engage with AI, but don’t let it do the whole thing for you. It’s a complement, not a substitute. Really interesting debate, around what’s appropriate.

Antony: But I love that phrase — is it the output or is it the struggle, what’s the point? And maybe I’m going to steal that with absolute abandon, James, with gratitude to Jonathan Raymond as well, because I think what a brilliant principle to take forwards. And I couldn’t agree more that the potential gift of AI should allow us to build our focus on that more self-actualisation, in a more rounded way, than purely the tyranny of optimisation, which I completely relate to.

James: Well, yeah, it feels to me like we’re at a real inflection point, because if you look at the macro headlines — AI is going to take all our jobs, the doomsday scenario — it won’t be that, will it. And then the other side, the technocrats will say AI has come to save us, and we can all — so it’s not going to be that either. It’s going to be somewhere in the middle, but it does feel like a real inflection point, and it’s both exciting and scary. And I think the thing I’ve maybe had a struggle with, in my own business and my own life, is there’s so much noise around it — you need to be a master prompter, you need to be outsourcing, you need to have an AI workforce that takes away all your problems. A lot of us are struggling with that, trying to understand how does this affect me and when, and there’s so much noise at the minute that I think it’s on all of us to keep listening to as much as we can about it, and also finding some different points of view. Antony, have you got something to say on that?

Antony: Yeah, there’s something that struck me as you were both talking there — what my experience so far is that people have been abdicating to AI. Rather than delegating, where you might ask a member of staff to go and do something for you, and then you bring it back and get their knowledge and their sharing — they’re actually abdicating. I had a recent experience with a potential new partner, where when I spoke to them I was having wonderful conversations, we were aligning, and then as soon as it was down to email or any kind of documentation, it was clear they were using AI, completely abdicated to it, didn’t reread through the email, didn’t reread through the document. And as a result it was a complete disaster, and we can’t work with that partner now, whereas we potentially had somebody who could have been a really good partner. So there’s that balance — for me, I hate dealing with documents, AI is wonderful for me, I far prefer the verbal word to the written word, it comes more naturally to me. But I know that when I have a contract or a document, the winning is in the struggle, actually turning everything off and sitting there going, I’ve got to work through this contract, because I’m going to learn so much as I go through it, and I become far more knowledgeable dealing with it. So it’s getting that balance — delegating, I think, is fine, but abdicating is where people are falling short at the moment.

Ben: Very good. Well, we must move on — huge learning James is giving us, and more to come, I’m sure, because I would love to hear, James, what have you learned along the way you’ve applied into your business?

James: So what I have learned — again this is another blog, an author called Shane Parrish, an aphorism from his last blog. He says that 90% of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are. And I really like that, because I think it’s distilled down into as few words as possible, but the real point is, for me, how I read that — you have to be confident and you have to be humble, you have to be authoritative and you have to be open, you have to be all these conflicting things all at once. We often try to distil our personalities down into one thing — I am such and such a type of person — but actually we have to be many different types of people in many different scenarios. I can really relate to that, and for me the real work comes long before the struggle or the discomfort, and that’s building the personality and attitude suitable for the work. And what I mean by that is the people I admire in business, when I look around, they’ve had a good idea, as we mentioned earlier, they’ve had energy to keep it going, and then that next thing that takes them on is the ability to do the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time — that ability to learn and sit in the discomfort, and really just keep on learning those lessons. The other interesting thing I found from that aphorism is ‘boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing’ — the obvious thing is only obvious if it’s obvious to you, right. You could read that and say, that sounds really easy, you just do the obvious thing and keep doing it, and you’re going to get success at the end of it — but what is that obvious thing? I think that’s often the superpower of people who are really good in business, they just see things so clearly that other people don’t. It’s not always entirely obvious what that thing is, but they just understand it, it’s almost like a language they speak fluently, whilst other people have less of a strong grasp on it. And then the ability to do that for an uncommonly long period of time — so I feel like that fits into the theme quite well, of sitting in discomfort. I was aware when I came up with this theme that it could sound rather negative — someone up-and-coming might listen to the podcast and really want to just be sitting in the mud for the next 11 years on the off chance they know what the obvious thing may be. So the counter to it is that being in discomfort shouldn’t be a permanent state — if I look at my week, Wednesday I did some hard thinking, that was a bit of discomfort, and yesterday I was doing some menu development, that was not uncomfortable, and if it had been, that would have been a problem. So it’s really not framing it as a permanent state in entrepreneurship, but it is probably more than I’d like it to be now. Alex, maybe you’ve got something to say on that.

Alex: Well, it’s more of a question for you, James — you’re a man who’s just given us a fantastic smorgasbord of things you’ve read, life experiences you’ve had, different philosophies, you’ve stitched so many things together. How do you stop that slipping into discomfort being the default? How do you stay on top of things, how do you keep yourself fresh — is it by reading all these different types of things, or is it the people you meet, is it going on a retreat every year? What do you do to stop yourself falling into this trap and keeping current, staying such the interesting man you are? How do you do it?

James: Flattery will get you everywhere. How do I do it — yeah, I would say I would certainly look at my business career as split into two distinct segments, one was before March or April 2020, and one was afterwards. Before, there was far less discomfort, afterwards has been far more discomfort, and I haven’t always got it right. I feel like I’ve probably lived in a state of discomfort, and probably stress as well, for longer than I’d like. What I do do is I have a fairly good barometer now — so when I feel it’s getting too much, I’ve got a toolbox of things I can do. It’s as simple as going for a run — I’m training for the London Marathon at the minute, so I have a good excuse to go running in the cold weather of the last few days. I have a meditation practice, and it’s something I’d love to say I did every single day, I don’t, but when things get super tough I do do it every day, and I’ll sit down in my office, write some notes, try and investigate some feelings I’ve got, and then once I’ve done that I’ll meditate, and I find those two practices really help me. I’ll then go to sleep after that, and most of the time the next day I’ll wake up feeling much, much calmer. Letting go of control as well is a huge one for me, because it’s probably one of the hardest things to do in business as a founder, to let other people do what you think you’d probably be better at. So really honing in on that and practising that, because ultimately now we have a business that employs 130 people, and it’s impossible for me to run it — and hopefully I don’t, but it will be impossible for me to run it the same as I used to when we had 30 or 40 people. So I suppose it’s those sort of physical and mental practices, coupled with trying to develop myself as a leader and get much better at letting go of control and trusting those around me.

Ben: Fabulous stuff, great answer. On that note, I’m afraid we are at time, so I will do my best, as I do, to try and summarise some amazing Founder Hacks from James Bates. James’s experience, seeing his friend pivot a successful business into something new, made him think — his friend was forced to do so through no fault of his own, and applying his skills into something new. James took an intuitive sense this was going to work, but was uncertain as to why. After reflecting, James recognised it was perhaps character his friend brought to the table that meant this was going to succeed — what that looked like: doing the necessary things, going over the right small details with the obsession of the entrepreneur, but at the same time leaving ego at the door. James recognised this meant this thing was going to succeed. We then have to ask, can these be learned? Maybe — and we’ve seen a lot of founders do it the hard way, but equally, maybe by knowing ourselves well enough to recognise, with humility, where we should lead and where we need help, is a key. And recognising these needs changes as our business grows and endures, will give us the success we’re seeking. James read a blog by Jonathan Raymond about AI — recognising our civilisation has been built for the past hundred years on cognitive supremacy, and the bounty of that has been transformation, at least for those of us lucky enough to live in the privileged world. However, we can still fall victim to the tyranny of optimisation. But he asks — has AI now taken away that cognitive supremacy, which could be a gift, allowing us to shift from doing to being more of the time? But at what risk — does AI reduce the benefits of discomfort, failure, learning and problems? Are we removing the very challenges that cause us to grow? So before we delegate to AI, can we pause — is the value in the output or the struggle? Outsourcing discomfort, even abdicating our discomfort to LLMs, may diminish us. But cutting through the noise, and learning to listen to what’s out there around this radical new technology, and how that’s relevant to your business, might be a way forward. James shared with us an aphorism by Shane Parrish — consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommon amount of time, whilst convincing yourself you are no smarter than you are. It’s a fascinating way to look at entrepreneurship and being a founder. I think we all probably see something in there we recognise — we have to be many people, in many scenarios, in many roles. So maybe maintaining that focus on developing our character, our ability to see things as they really are, to identify the obvious, and then furnishing ourselves with the resilience to endure over time, will pay dividends. Not framing discomfort as a permanent state is probably good too, but recognising it in ourselves, having a barometer and a toolkit to restore ourselves when we need, may enable us — whatever that means for you. But the bottom line for James — letting go of control, and practising that, and through that, allowing his business to flourish and grow, has delivered him the success he’s experienced thus far. I hope that James pays some tribute to some amazing Founder Hacks, and some great learning, and thank you so much for bringing it to us today. As ever, dear listener, I do hope something there was inspiration to you, and something that can transform your business, just a little tiny bit. We’d also discussed, no silver bullets, in previous Founder Hacks, and I think that’s come up today — those little 1% incremental improvements we can make across the piece can often deliver us a completely different outcome. So I hope something in here gives you that tiny 1% for this week. So let’s finish by saying a huge, massive thank you to James Bates. We’re going to have to have you back, James, because there’s so much more we could go into, right, we need to make it longer as well, we need to triple it in length.

James: Yeah, we’ll have to do an extended special, because there’s so much there.

Ben: But wonderful stuff, thank you, and of course thank you and goodbye to Antony Enright.

Antony: Thank you all — and James, I can’t believe we’ve taken this long to get you on, so it’s great that you’ve joined us today, fabulous stuff.

Ben: And of course thank you and farewell to Alex Moore.

Alex: Bye guys, and thanks James, brilliant.

Ben: And thank you to you, our listener, please do join us again next time. Until then, I’ve been Ben Thomas, this has been Founder Hacks, thanks very much indeed for listening. Founder Hacks is brought to you by Atomex — bespoke support for the startup-to-scale-up journey. Editing is by Paul Stevens, and music is by Reuven. Join us again soon for more Founder Hacks.