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OVER THE
COUNTER
BY DAVID ROBERTSON OF JP POZZI, ELGIN AND BUCKIE.
Right: David Robertson with his friend Kevin Goodbrand at The Rolling Stones concert recently. Below: Hiro helping his dad David in the home office as he recovers from Covid. Bottom: The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett sheds light on the inspirations and experiences of several notable entrepreneurs.
You Can’t Always
Get What You Want...
I fully appreciate that in the last month I have done things that most new dads don’t get the chance to do. I visited London with two close pals to see The Rolling Stones in concert and spent a couple of days enjoying the city. I then followed this up with attending The Retas where I lapped up all the industry chat. When I got back, I caught up work wise and also caught Covid. As I write this, I have spent the last week in solitary confinement (upstairs in my house) sleeping, sweating, coughing and thinking. In fact, I have probably been thinking way too much. The tiredness and lack of achievement has made me mentally test myself even more. The highlight of each day has been getting out around 10pm to walk the dog in the local woods with no-one to bump into. Each evening on this walk I have been listening to the Diary of a CEO podcast by Steven Bartlett, the new young ‘Dragon’. It has made me realise how young or new business people now have 20
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
the opportunity to immerse themselves in the stories of so many inspiring people. Coming into our business in the 90s everything I did with my folks was on instinct. There were no real models or guides. We were just ordinary folk running a shop. Yes, there were business books, but I am not sure even where I would have started to look for the right things to read. Some of the big business successes of the 90s - Lord Sugar, Clive Sinclair, Rupert Murdoch etc - were all figures that seemed very distant. Back then we did not have the plethora of selfhelp books that there are now. Weakness, challenges, mental strength, manifestation were not discussed on a daily basis like they are now and the will to achieve was somehow looked at differently.
With a new baby many of you will no doubt be thinking that my column this month’s column will be all be about lack of sleep and dirty nappies. Suffice to say I feel a bit of a fraud as my wife has basically done all the hard yards since Hudson hustled his way into our lives, while I have been lucky to have been to London to see The Rolling Stones, unlucky to have caught Covid, but also had time to reflect on Mick Jagger’s lyrics, that while ‘you can’t always get what you want’, we will all keep trying. There was not the constant fanfaring of examples of businesses rising from nothing to something mega that seem to be so common on social media these days. Just think about Gymshark, Moonpig, Brewdog and so many other start-ups that have gone on to be something really special. The rise in tech-savvy young entrepreneurs who