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Transcription

Hi, my name is Augustin. I'm 37 years old, I'm married to Victoire, I'm blessed with 5 children and I co-founded an adventure called Michel et Augustin with Michel, an old middle school pal of mine. Michel et Augustin is about bringing a smile to the face of the planet with tasty, healthy and natural products. I believe that the added value of our adventure is an approach based on sincerity and authenticity. It is above all a story about people and today, it's I, Michel and a team of 37 people. It's a story about people who are passionate, who are very fond of good food who wanted to offer the biggest number of people products that we make almost every day or every weekend with the ingredients that we have in our kitchen putting real effort into the taste and rather than making something up, we want to tell the story of our life doing this and share it with our consumers. So, the first thing as an entrepreneur is to be sensitive to one's surroundings, to be curious, to take note of needs and feelings that are not satisfied by the market. This is where one feels like an entrepreneur with an innovative side. And we had a need that was instead of having brands that are invented brands, to have someone share something real, inspired by the American ice-cream brand, Ben and Jerry's. Without them I don't think we would have had the idea to create the adventure the way we did, , but today I'm not Jerry and Michel isn't Ben, so to each their adventure. That's the first stage. The second stage is very simple: you go home and you tell yourself "I'm launching a new food brand", so I set to making little cookies, little biscuits in the oven in my kitchen. And we started to sell them door to door out of pink shopping carts to local storekeepers downstairs from my apartment in the 18th district in Paris. The third stage was when we leased a cookie factory and there we had the idea of bringing out something more than the cookies, a premium drinkable yogurt because we did not found it on the market and we wanted it. Always the same, so that's "the drinkable cow". And there aren't so many steps after that. It took us 7 years to get to where we are -- that is to be a nice Small to Medium Company with pretty exceptional potential. But we took the time to learn all the crafts, to work through each of the stages, and it didn't go so fast. So, what I find most significant about us is the successive moving of the "banana plantation" (name of the HQ), a little bit artificial, but not really so, and not really at key moments, but between ourselves we refer to plantation 1.0 that was my apartment, 2.0 rue de Pondichéry in the 15th district in Paris and 3.0 is now in Boulogne Billancourt. I don't believe that you become an entrepreneur. For my part, I have always been an entrepreneur in the sense that what excites me most is to turn an idea that has no physical reality into something that can be seen, read and shared. Ever since I was little I have always been in that frame of mind, had that personality. So I have always been an entrepreneur in my life and I have always had lots of ideas that I turned into projects. So, there wasn't a defining moment. I believe it comes down to personality, to education and to one's parents, too. I never got the feeling that I was taking a risk by opening a business. That's to say that I consider that even it is fails, I will surely have learned something. For French people risks are often very psychological. So, I don't feel as though I made a choice -- it's always been part of my personality I worked for both Club Med and Air France: at Club Med because I was passionate about tourism and I wanted to know more about the sector. When I started at Air France it was mainly because there was someone I wanted to work for. But even working at Air France and Club Med I knew it was because I wanted to undertake things for myself. It worked out or it didn't and even when I saw that it wasn't working, as with Air France, even though it's a great company and I have lots of friends who have a great time there, I decided to become be an entrepreneur in my own business starting with nothing. So there you are, there's something pretty exciting about saying to yourself: "I'm starting with a blank page". I've never known failure because I don't accept the word. It's a word I have banished and when you take an interest in NLP education, everything to do with Neuro-linguistic Programming, I don't talk about failure but about learning. Obviously there is a lot of stuff I've done wrong, that I didn't do right and that I could have done better, but I never speak of failure and I tend to say "What have I learned from this?". So I have never lived through failure but I have learned a lot of lessons. When there is real problem, my approach is to do some sport. Either I go running or I go cycling or I swim and when I practice the sport, I find the solution. There are very important things in life and they are health and family and everything else is secondary or not very important. So, I learn a lot and life has taught me a lot about stepping back from what you are doing, to take the drama out of things, and when you see that you are taking a serene approach to things, they go much more smoothly. We are all the lead roles in our own lives. That is, we can decide to be happy or decide to be unhappy but for the most part your happiness depends on you and not your neighbor. In general this solves a lot of things and in general you have a much better chance of being happier. It's enough to say to yourself that you have to stop complaining and blaming problems on others. We are the lead actors in our own life and happiness is very often just a question of will. There is three simple things. To succeed, you need energy, some common sense, - I'm not at all an intellectual, I'm a pretty pragmatic guy who has some good sense. - And the third thing is the key and everyone knows it, and I'm not sure that everyone puts their best efforts into it, is recruitment. It's the capacity to surround oneself with talented people who hold the same values as you do, with the same enthusiasm and the same energy. So, good sense and energy are quite personal but above all, the key to which a lot of time and means need to be given over, is the capacity to gather the right people around you. We understood the key to success One important thing that we have above all is the most precious resource one can have at work and it's time...and energy. About time -- every Sunday evening I plan my diary for the week, whether outside or internal meetings or meetings with oneself. It means that I don't have a free moment in my diary. It could be a moment marked meeting with myself about whatever subject, rest... but mostly it is really important to manage one's time between allocating it to projects that are internal, external or with oneself to get ahead of your own subjects. And after that, they are parallel managed. I find two rhythms: there's the tempo of all the little things that have to be done quickly, that distract you a little and you isolate them on your To Do list with all the urgent things and all the background subjects, so as to not forget them all the time, to not let yourself get overrun by the day to day and you say to yourself: OK for the major background issues, I know them by heart, this is what I want in the mid to long term. I built my professional and personal path path on differentiation because that is what suits me. I didn't calculate it, it's what suited me. From there to say how to emerge, how to rise to the top, it's like when you take an aisle in Auchan (major mass market retailer) in a town like Vélizy where you've got 300 meters lined up with cookies, what do you do to stand out, what are you offering that is different. I find that the educational system in France does not encourage us to do that but rather exerts constant pressure to encourage purely scholarly success. So, I truly believe that we have to manage to help people to blossom, to identify their talents so that everyone gets to know themselves well and be accepting of people who are different. I have dual training, both a business school and a manual diploma as a baker. It's something that I want to invite, to incite my children to do, and they will make their own choices after that. Alongside a so-called "intellectual" education, to also have a manual one. It's always the same. I find that in life you have different poles; you've got your family, you've got your friends, you've got your sport, you've got your social engagements, etc... In line with your priorities, you must succeed in managing the time and energy allocated to each. Obviously, I made the choice to have a large family because it's the most important thing in life. I've seen people who have had enormous success professionally but who have reached retirement age and have a life devoid of meaning. The most important thing in my life, and I devote time to it, and it's a chance you have as an entrepreneur, is to be able to manage your diary the way you want. So yes, it's your wife, your children, family in the wider sense, your friends... So, for me it is absolutely capital in the sense I give to my life. The funniest thing was when we went with our first partner, historically our first seller was Salah who has a small grocery store at 24 rue herbé and who's a friend. The first time we went there for the TV it was on TF1 on a show called Combien ça coute? (What's the price?). I let him know that we were about to arrive. We arrived with the TV crew and he welcomed us very kindly and he disappeared saying, "Excuse me, I'll be back in 2 minutes". He went away and he came back 2 minutes later wearing a tuxedo that was too big. It was really funny to see that for him, to be on the TV on TF1 he had to wear a tuxedo, to make an effort. It was both very touching and completely weird. And you should have seen the faces of the journalists and the cameraman - it was honestly quite funny I think that the message is to say that we take tremendous pleasure in working here every day with a super team, and that work should never be lived as an obligation,but as a source of pleasure. I remember the advice of one of my former bosses at Air France who asked me: Are you learning, are you enjoying what you do every day? At the time I told him no, so I quit. It really is a question to ask yourself every morning. You must live your passions to the full and live a little bit irrationally, listen to your heart and not listen too much to the rational advice that others will give you, so go for it.