The High Five Series with Chris Jowsey

1. The Catalyst: Tell us about a moment that sparked a step change in your business or career. What happened, and why did it prove to be a turning point?

In 2000 I made the decision to leave a safe and secure job in the NHS to become a ‘dot-com millionaire’. I had been doing well in the NHS but was starting to chafe under the structure. Along with three other friends I took a big leap of faith to create our own start- up and ride the dot-com wave.

Looking back, it might look like a bizarre step but I learnt a huge amount. We spent 18 months raising funds and I maxed out my credit cards to fund the business. I learnt a lot about cash, about the differences between the public and private sector and most importantly about entrepreneurism.

Ultimately the business failed. But crucially the experience was the catalyst that took me into the brewing industry where I ultimately made my career. At the time I had a young family and in the final stages of my dot-com career I urgently needed money and so took on some consultancy work for the then major multinational brewing company Scottish & Newcastle.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

2. The Friction Point: What was the toughest obstacle you have had to overcome in your career when trying to grow a business, brand or team. How did you overcome it?

The biggest friction point I’ve always come up against in my career when trying to drive change is the time-consuming challenge of ‘smart resistance.’

If you have the right people on the bus, you can ultimately do anything. Equally, honest challenge can be valuable in shaping a new direction. But the most frustrating issue can be when people are against change but are not open about it. Nodding agreement in meetings but whispering behind closed doors. In my experience this can become a huge barrier and often results in a lot of time wasted.

One of the first times in my career when I encountered this was during my time at Scottish & Newcastle when we bought Bulmers Cider. Essentially a classic case of a family-run business being acquired by a multinational company - we were met with a wall of suspicion which made the integration incredibly difficult.

Later on in my career at Heineken, I found myself faced with a similar challenge where we wanted to drive a high level of change in the part of the business I was running at the time. Once again, we were encountering smart resistance, with people refusing to openly challenge ideas but constantly quietly undermining the new strategy.  

One of my colleagues said something at the time that really struck a chord with me - ”We are not going to accept mediocrity any more.” Learning from the past we acted decisively, quickly changed 25% of the team, and having stamped out ‘small resistance,’ the business flew.

3. The Pivot: Growth often requires change – tell us about a time when you had to pivot your strategy or culture to keep the momentum going. What prompted the pivot and what happened next?

By 2022 I had been at Admiral Taverns for circa three years. At the time, Admiral was still predominantly focussed around a leased and tenanted business model, lending itself to patient growth. In this immediate post-COVID era, inflation was going nuts and as a management team we took the decision that the biggest immediate commercial lever we could pull would be to convert more of our pubs into a retail pub model.

A big part of this pivot was the learnings from our largest acquisition to date in late 2021 – Hawthorn Leisure –  which brought its established ‘Proper Pubs’ retail model into Admiral. Both our cultures were strong – similar in many ways but with some important differences too. We adopted a ‘best of both’ mentality. We knew we had to have a lot of engagement in their business, be highly visible and very transparent.

The pivot to make the acquisition and the subsequent successful integration really drove the business forward. So often acquisitions are value decreasing but this drove significant benefits for the combined business and ratified our credentials to the industry as a good acquirer of pubs. That reputation continues to serve us well to this day.

We have grown that retail component of our 1300 strong estate to 240 pubs as of today – a big operational and cultural transition for any Leased and Tenanted pub company and a big step forward in diversifying our growth profile.

4. The Hard Lesson:  Tell us about a decision that didn't go to plan. What did you learn, and how did it change the way you lead or grow the business or team?

Where to start? When I went off to be a ‘dot-com millionaire,’ the first two years saw a huge amount of effort in order to set up, obtain financial backing and build our tech platform.

Our ambition had been to create an ‘Amazon’ for the health service in the UK but we woke up one morning to find the NHS had taken the decision to build their own proprietary platform, killing our market overnight. It subsequently took them three years of trying, £25m of investment and they never actually delivered what they set out to achieve. But for us growth was now impossible and we had nowhere to go.

The hard lesson I learnt was to stay vigilant to the left-field threats to your business. Scan the horizon continually, never be complacent, be alert to that change and anticipate it wherever you can.

Today I expect a lot of people are talking about AI in a very similar way.

5. The Golden Rule: Looking back over your career, what principle has consistently guided the biggest growth decisions you've made?

For me there is no one golden rule, but rather several principles which have always been important to me.

Firstly, the importance of integrity and values. If a decision feels right and is grounded in integrity it will probably yield the right result. In COVID, at Admiral we took the very early decision to offer our licensees six weeks rent free. Trading had ceased overnight and many were faced with a huge cash crisis. This decision gave many vital breathing space to reorganise their operations and devise a plan to trade through. When we did start to reintroduce rent it was met with a pragmatic response, and in the majority of cases I think our relationships with our licensees emerged from the pandemic in an even stronger position.

Secondly when building businesses, I think it’s very important not to confuse value with scale. If you are getting bigger but are failing to build value – then what’s the point?

And finally, regardless of your type of business or sector, I firmly believe that you need to be relentless in the pursuit of growth. Never underestimate how difficult it is to achieve real, sustainable growth and how hard you have to work at it.