(BrewDog Founders James Watt and Martin Dickie)

BrewDog’s James Watt, who founded the now global craft brewery along with Martin Dickie, is an outspoken man…A man willing to own his past mistakes like appearing on several business reality TV shows.

Here’s the deal…

Although BrewDog began as a Scottish garage brewery in 2007, it has grown into an international drinks maker that in addition to brewing, owns a cidery, a distilling operation, now employs more than 2,000 team members and has over 100 bars all over the planet.

But in spite of a difficult year marked by a controversial BrewDog documentary and accusations of having fostered a toxic workspace , Watt’s quick to celebrate the company’s many successes. And on January 19, he took to Linkedin and owned up to past mistakes he regretted… Like appearing on several reality TV shows in the UK that he felt were built to dismiss true entrepreneurship.

Because we like him (many don’t) and were struck by his unflinching self-appraisal, we are reposting this aspect of his post in full…

The Reality TV Trap

For some reason our big cultural institutions have a real problem with our business. In the US, people who take risks and create jobs are celebrated; in the UK the best they can expect is to be tolerated. We are far from alone in this regard.

The BBC in particular has a barely disguised distaste for entrepreneurs (the whole purpose of Dragons Den, for example, is to present entrepreneurs as deluded fantasists. The same is true with The Apprentice).

The BBC actually rejected us at the last minute from Dragon’s Den back in 2009, preventing the Dragons from capitalizing on what would have been by far the most lucrative deal in Den history. Of course, looking back, it was a stroke of luck we didn’t sell 20% of our business to someone else for £100,000.

With that lucky escape in mind, what on earth was I thinking agreeing to the next one? When the BBC wanted BrewDog to be the focus business on one episode of their recruitment show ‘Who’s The Boss’, I should have known better.

The show was a complete hatchet job. We were lied to and sent candidates completely unsuited to the role we were hiring for and then made to look crazy for trying to protect our team and our business.

This is not criticism of those individuals to be clear – they were being used as much as we were, but while it might have been a game for the producers, it wasn’t for us. We really were looking to hire for the role in question. [/box]

Say what you will about James Watt he’s not afraid to acknowledge his mistakes both professional and personal.

And not everybody does that….

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Want more mistakes?

BREWDOG CEO JAMES WATT ON ‘NOT KNOWING HIS OWN WEAKNESSES

BREWDOG’S JAMES WATT APOLOGIZES FOR INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR 

BREWDOG CEO JAMES WATT ON PAST BEER MISTAKES

(All image credits: BrewDog)