Jean-Claude Biver - Hublot Trailblazer & CEO: The Wizard Of Swiss Watchmaking

Full transcript: Jean-Claude Biver on London Real

3:38 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Jean-Claude Biver, the luxury watchmaker, lecturer, businessman and cheese maker. Across your 40-year career, you have led some of the world’s leading watch brands including Omega, Hublot and TAG Heuer, with many describing you as the man who single-handedly saved the watch industry.

4:00 You are currently serving as a non-executive chairman of the LVMH watch division, responsible for Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and now spend your time sharing your wisdom and experience through lectures and interviews in an attempt to inspire future generations of innovators. Jean-Claude, welcome to London Real.

4:17 Jean-Claude Biver: Thank you very much, Brian.

4:19 Brian Rose: Great, great having you here. What is your impression when you take that plane into London?

4:24 What does London bring back for you? How does it make you feel? What are the memories you get when you visit the city?

4:37 Jean-Claude Biver: London is the Queen, because I think it’s one of the best promoters of this country. I love the Queen.

4:48 I respect the Queen. What she is doing is incredible at her age. She’s so much devoted, and I think the Queen is important for English people because it brings people together. You have one person that brings everybody together. So it means the Queen, it means also Big Ben.

5:08 Big Ben is eternity. Who is eternal? Big Ben. The what? Can you imagine that 450 years this watch has worked non-stop, 24 hours a day, every second of the day, no service, no maintenance, and it works and works and works and works?

5:33 That a building can stay long like the Acropolis in Athens, I understand, but a product that is a mechanical product that works, that can work 150 years non-stop, that’s enormous. This is why I say in my job, watchmaking art, we connect to eternity. How many products can you buy that connects you to eternity? None. Every product you buy connects you to obsolescence.

6:15 You know that one day you will have to throw it away, because technology goes into the future by destroying the past. It makes the past obsolete. The black and white TV has been killed thanks to the four color TV. The four color TV will be killed thanks to the 3D four color TV. So you see, technology goes into the future and always destroys what was in the past.

6:50 The watchmaking art, and art, goes in the future by connecting the past to the future, not destroying it. The Beatles are still singing. Every day millions of people are listening to “All You Need Is Love,” for instance. Mozart is alive, Picasso is alive, and that is what attracts me so much. My job is to say I connect, through my job I connect people to the future, to eternity.

7:31 Not only do we connect people thanks to their watch to eternity, we also give a soul to our products. How many products have a soul? The soul can only be given by fingers. A machine cannot transfer a soul. It can transfer perfection, it can transfer productivity, can transfer profit, but it cannot transfer soul.

8:07 And what do we need today? We are in a century where we need love. But what is love? Love is God. As long as I have a, as I listen to the religions who say God is love.

8:23 If God is something different than love, I don’t know. I’ve never heard about a religion where love is something different than love. So God is love. But what else? Art is also love.

8:38 Passion is love. So you see, when you have a product, when you are at the head of a company where people with their hands, with their fingers, are putting love, their passion, their love into a movement, and then they close it with the watch case, and then all these vibrations of love are in the box and they come out. That is why in the middle of the last century, around the 50s, in the Catholic, French, well-established society, there was a tradition to offer a watch when you get married.

9:30 My father gave me the watch my mother, his wife, gave him in 1947 when they got engaged. And before he died he gave me this watch, and he said, “This is the watch that your mother gave me when we got engaged.” I took the watch, you know, I said, “Thank you, Papa, let me see.” I took the watch and mechanically I wound it up, the crown, and that’s it. “Wow, it’s working.”

10:05 I said to me, of course it’s working, it has worked non-stop since 1947. That is what attracts me in my job, because I am not just in a company making money, marketing, sales, but I’m also in a company where we can say, wow, we are proud, we are the artisans of giving birth to a product with a soul, with a product with love. And I say to my people, I don’t know, I write about 2,000 letters per year to people who have bought my watch. When they contact me, like today I was in Dubai, and the German guy said, “I just acquired your watch,” and I said, “Listen, bravo, thank you very much, send me the number of the watch, the case number, and I will send you my private personal extended guarantee, and in the moment I wish you a lot of success and a lot of happiness while wearing your watch,” because I believe that the watch can bring you something, because the love that is inside cannot disappear, and the love that is inside the watch, the love which means the people who have done it with love, with passion, passion is love, it is there, and you must just believe it, and you must learn to believe it, and you must learn to talk to your watch.

11:54 That’s why I say to people, don’t look what time it is on your watch, use your phone and then you see what time it is, but not your watch. Your watch tells you much more. If the watch tells you time, what a shame, how poor it is, it tells you much more. So look at your watch, don’t look at what time it is. And that gives me a level of satisfaction in my job that is so big that I say, and I said that this morning, goddamn, I must start something again.

12:30 I cannot just retire and give lessons to Harvard Business School or London Business School or just train young people or just give back. I want to have this feeling again that I make a product and that this product one day is worn and it brings something to the one who wears it. That is, I think, the artist. I’m not an artist, but art is the same. When I buy a picture from an artist and I put it in my home, it brings me, it talks to me, and the artist has this incredible satisfaction that he transfers his passion or the breaking his love to somebody else, and this somebody else will get and enrich himself by the love he gets, which is from the, on his wall.

13:32 Brian Rose: But the watch is something very peculiar because you’re saying it’s not a machine, it’s not a piece of art, it’s a connection to eternity.

13:43 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, but it’s also a piece of art. It’s a piece of art because, and we say watchmaking art. You have the watchmaking industry, which is a big part, all these watches that retail for $50, $100, whatever, it’s not, it’s an industry. And then you have the watchmaking art, these are the people who produce.

14:08 Maybe Hublot makes sixty thousand, fifty-eight thousand pieces. You have other brands that make a hundred watches, and you have some brands that make maybe a hundred thousand, but very small. And here you are definitely talking about art. It is an art. That’s why we say watchmaker, master watchmaking art.

14:32 Brian Rose: So, you have clearly both. Can I tell you about my watch? So for 40 years of my life, I’m from America, San Diego, where we don’t have any timepieces that I remember. I don’t remember us having any traditions, or let alone any fashion or style. So for 40 years of my life I had maybe a digital watch, but when I got to London, I was working in the banking industry, and if you’re in the banking industry as a man, you can’t wear jewelry, and so the only thing you have that can really set yourself out from the other men in the room to project power is your watch.

15:10 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, yes.

15:11 Brian Rose: And so a lot of guys get into their watches and they invest in watches. For me, I was looking at the music industry, and one of my favorite musicians was 50 Cent, a hip-hop artist, and he had a big watch with diamonds on it on one of his books, and so I loved his music, and I walked down Old Bond Street and I went to all the watchmakers and said, “I want this watch.” And Jean-Claude, you got to forgive me, because it was a Jacob watch, which was an electronic watch with diamonds all over it, very bling.

15:41 The American rappers liked it, and everyone said, “No, you don’t want a Jacob watch, go to Harrods, we don’t sell that, we only sell timepieces.” And so I went to a place called Marcus on Old Bond Street, which I don’t think is there anymore, but at the time the only ones who sold Hublots were Marcus and maybe Harrods. Before Hublot had a store in London, and, you know, because you ran this company, and they showed me the Hublot and I said, it’s kind of rubber strap, it’s rose gold, only old men wear gold watches.

16:09 But the more I looked at it, I started understanding it’s mechanical, it’s got this beautiful thing on the back and self-winds and there’s no batteries, and I bought my very first watch ever. And this is in 2006 or 2007, probably right when you were taking over, before Hublot became everywhere. Yeah, before they were sponsoring Formula One. Yes. And this was, I think, one of the first ones.

16:35 Brian Rose: Is it maybe you were responsible for it?

16:38 Jean-Claude Biver: It’s a Big Bang. That’s my first innovation. That’s how we brought Hublot back to the front of the scene of the Swiss watchmaking. The Big Bang is the, that’s what we did, that’s how we started with the Big Bang.

16:55 And I called it Big Bang.

16:57 Brian Rose: Why did you call it Big Bang, and what was the innovation that goes behind the timepiece? It’s also based on hundreds of years of tradition. I mean, people think of Switzerland in timepieces and they don’t think of innovation, and yet this was massively, truly, extremely innovative and must have been difficult to do.

17:15 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, not easy.

17:16 Jean-Claude Biver: And, you know, you see how life is strange. San Diego reminds me of Dennis Conner. Then is Conner, he won the America’s Cup. Yes, a famous sailor, sailor. Yeah, he won several times.

17:33 I went to San Diego because I know him well, I slept in his home and I met him, Samantha, and, you know what, he doesn’t wear a watch as a sailor. The start is very important, you must start at the right time, you cannot start one minute after the other boat. And I said to him, “Dennis, you don’t wear a watch?” He said, “No, I have my people who tell me 30 seconds, 20 seconds, but I don’t have a watch. I am concentrated on sailing and I don’t wear a watch.”

18:09 He’s probably the only sailor that has no watch. Then you talk about Marcus. Marcus is my friend. Okay, I’ve known Marcus in, not recently, but not so long a time ago, but I met Marcus for the first time in 1981, and it’s since 1981 we are friends. We go together for holidays, I mean, we are friends.

18:33 We’re friends, and of course he was the first one to introduce my Big Bang in London. He was also one of the first ones to introduce my brand anyhow in the world, because in the beginning we didn’t have many customers. Now why do we name it Big Bang? Our the concept of Hublot, the message of the brand, every brand must have a message. Why do I make watches?

19:02 Why, what’s the reason? The reason why Hublot makes watches is that they bring together the past and the future. The past is there, the future is here, you can in theory not bring them together, and we say yes, because here we call it tradition, past, and here innovation, future, and the innovation and the past you can meet, and we connect them, which means gold, 18 karat red gold, we bring it together with an extraordinary modern material, ceramic or rubber or carbon.

19:54 That’s what we call the fusion. We fuse the past, this tradition, we bring it with the future, which is innovation, we bring those two together. So our message is Hublot means the art of fusion in the watchmaking art. Okay, now why the name Big Bang? Because when did we see for the first time gold and rubber together?

20:28 When? In the Big Bang, because they were all together, and then the Big Bang comes, a bomb, and gold says, “Oh, I will go to South Africa under the earth,” and rubber says, “Oh no, no, I prefer the tree, I go to Malaysia and I go on the tree,” and then they separated and never again would they meet. And we come and we say, “Hey, gold, rubber, you know what, we are the art of fusion, we’re gonna bring you both together again.” So we will go into the mine of South Africa, we bring gold, we go to the tree and we bring rubber, and they say, “Okay, you rubber, you gold, come on, now we’re gonna fuse you together.”

21:23 Jump, and therefore I said we have only one name for the watch, it’s Big Bang, because it explains who we are, what we are. And everybody, we have a list of hundred names or 85 names. I said, “No, come on guys, I call it Big Bang.” Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. I said, “Of course it means, it means what we are doing.”

21:48 So that’s why I did it.

21:50 Brian Rose: Did everyone think you were crazy?

21:52 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes. As long as people think you are crazy, as long as they are jealous, as long as they envy you, you are right, you are doing the right thing. How can you measure?

22:04 You can only measure through people who say you are crazy, people who say you are stupid, people who are jealous, that shows you are right. So when we are criticized, people criticize us, I said to my people, “Come on guys, this is a compliment. That’s how good you are.”

22:21 Brian Rose: Hey, but you’re going to compete in a watch industry where everything is so traditional, yes, and you’re now saying I’m gonna stick rose gold with a rubber strap, you’re asking people to pay fifteen, twenty thousand pounds and you’re giving me a rubber strap?

22:37 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes.

22:37 Brian Rose: They must look at you like you’re crazy. The competition would say, “This is Jo, we’ll never have to worry about.”

22:45 Jean-Claude Biver: I hope, as long as they say that, you are successful. If they say you are great, your success is gone.

22:51 They will never make competition. Normally one doesn’t make compliments on others, they say, they only find something bad to say. Now rubber, just between you and me, what is better: crocodile that you have killed, or calf that you have killed, or pork skin that you have killed, or is it better rubber that you have taken from the Hevea area, from the tree? I think rubber is better. Number two, rubber is anti-allergic, because that’s natural rubber, the natural rubber is anti-allergic.

23:27 People, some people are allergic against leather, so it’s anti-allergic. Number three, can you go into water with a crocodile bracelet? Now the crocodile is in the water, but not the bracelet, not the skin, so it’s not waterproof. We are waterproof. Number four, what is the resistance of our leather?

23:51 Look at your shoe, leather shoes. If you go with dancing leather shoes in the mountains, you will see how bad they will, you will, the shoe, we look after you have walked 15 miles in the mountain. So raw rubber is more resistant, more solid, it lasts for years and years, it is water-resistant, it has no allergy, and it is from a biological point of view much more natural than killing a bird, killing a calf just to have, you know, your bracelet. So rubber is the perfect solution, but was never used before, never used in luxury watches because I tend, the people who are managing luxury tend to believe that luxury belongs to the past.

24:45 No, luxury has some rules from the past, from which we call tradition, but if you repeat tradition, where is your creativity? You are a repeater. And okay, I’m not against museums. The museum is, this tells us how the past was, but it’s not because I understand how the past was in the past that I should do today the same, because everything has an evolution, even luxury. And if you look at certain luxury hotels, they all look finally boring because they look the same.

25:29 So luxury has to change. I was in a, in a, no, telling you, believe, we’re in the restaurant, the smallest table was for 16 people, and that’s just great because it brings you together with others, it’s like a communion, and it brings a totally other atmosphere than if everybody is sitting on a table with two and don’t dare to speak too loud. So luxury is also changing, and these changes of luxury are going to accelerate in the 21st century, because the 21st century has not yet started.

26:10 We are in the 20th century. The people in 2010, “Mr. Biver, we are in 2019, this is the 21st.” I said, mathematically it is the 21st century. Yes, sir, 2019 should and belongs from the mathematic to the 21st century, but we are not in the 21st century, and I’ll tell you now why. Why?

26:32 Because on the 31st of December 1999 there was a celebration, 21st century, bottles, special bottles of champagne and this and this and this, everybody said, “Welcome 21st century,” and then they woke up first of January 2000, and what did they change in their behavior? Nothing. Same policies, same philosophy, same political problems, same imperialism, same colonialism, nothing has changed, because the same people just woke up within another day. The date had changed, but not the people, not the mentality, not the philosophies, not the concepts, nothing, just the date.

27:23 Now when will the century change? When the millennials born in this century will shape the future of the century, and they will start to shape it in 2030, 2035, when they will be 30 years old, 35 years old or 40 years old, which means then we will feel the wind of the new century, because it will have the wind of the future and not the copy of the past. I even myself, I had to shake me in my head and say, “Come on, Biver, don’t repeat now the 20th century, I must, I must invent, I must see where is the century going.”

28:11 Brian Rose: That’s why I heard, is that what this was?

28:14 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, that I was doing this typically, and I had an advisory board of millennials.

28:21 Brian Rose: They were 16 years old, 16, sixteen average age.

28:25 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, average age somewhere 14, some other 18, and they taught me eight years ago who was ASAP Rocky, who was 50 Cent, who was Cara Delevingne. They, I didn’t know, they told me, “Where do you buy jeans that cost over 3,000 pounds the pair of jeans?”

28:44 All this I learned through the millennials. And when you don’t learn from the people who will shape the future, then you become old. Not old in the passport, all in the past, nobody cares, but old here and eventually old here. And then you can say, “Wow, I am old.” But who can say he’s old when in the passport it’s written that he’s born in 1940 but the guy is young in the head and young in the heart?

29:19 That tells you who you are. But how can I learn the future when I am not a member of it? I myself, in the 70s and 80s, I was a member of the future because I came out of the hippie movement. I was a hippie and we were doing the future by ourselves. My parents, they were looking and they said, “I don’t understand these kids.

29:51 Look, the Rolling Stones, how they are dressed, look, why, look their hairs,” and blah blah blah blah, that couldn’t understand, but we were in it, we understood it. Today the same factor happens to me. I am like the parents. I see this new movement going on from the young people, and if I don’t learn from them, if I don’t listen to them, then I will not understand them, and I will start to criticize, look at blah blah blah, and then I will be old, and I refuse to be old.

30:24 I accept my age in the passport, but f*** not in my head, not in my head and never in my heart.

30:32 Brian Rose: Jean-Claude, I’m loving this. I’m loving this. Uh, you always say you must be first, be different and be unique, yes, and if you can be those three things you say you get unlimited budget because you’re always gonna win.

30:51 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, you’re always gonna win, because you cannot be a dead fish swimming in the river.

30:58 Now you have a river here in London, you can, I don’t know if you can see the fishes, if it’s sufficiently transparent, but Confucius, he had the river that was very transparent and he said, “Only the dead fish swims with the current, in the speed of the current and in the direction of the current. The fish that is alive goes left, right of the current, against the current, or with the current three times faster.” So this is what we learned when we were hippies, because we were reading Confucius, and I said, “Wow, do I want to be a dead fish?

31:46 No. How can I be alive? Yes. I will be alive if I am different. If I go with the current, I’m dead, so I will go against the current, or left or right of the current, or three times faster.”

32:02 Okay, but in order to do that you must be first, you must be different, you must be unique. And so if you are first, different, unique, you have a winning, you are winning, you cannot lose. It is like if I play poker, if I have four aces, I cannot lose. I can play everything, I can sail, and I can’t cry my hand, but at the end you gonna win. Same, first, different, unique, we win.

32:30 You can only lose if you are first, different and unique but it’s not coherent with your message. If I make a watch, a Hublot watch, that I retail for five Swiss francs that is in wood and I produce 1 million pieces for $5, I will be first, I will be different, I will be unique, but I will be an a**hole because it’s not coherent with the message of Hublot. Right, so first, different, unique. I always say to the students that’s what you have to go for and that will bring you success, and it must be coherent with what you’re looking for.

33:14 So that is one of my basic rules in life, and again I got it in the 70s, no, late 60s, because we were really confused and sometimes I couldn’t understand what the guy was telling us, but at least the dead fish is something I have never forgotten. I even see, because I have seen, I was quite often along the rivers and you really see the dead fish goes absolutely with the current, in the direction of the current and in the speed of the current.

33:48 Brian Rose: But you’re in a traditional industry like Swiss watches and you’re bringing in all these radical ideas, I mean, that must be very difficult for someone to do.

34:00 I mean, besides Hublot, I don’t know of any brand that made such a massive change and was such a massive success in an industry that’s probably built on slow growth, getting around. I mean, Swiss watch brands around for hundreds of years.

34:18 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, right, yes, but you are right, but it’s changing now because the new generation. I give you a very good example. Rubber doesn’t mean luxury.

34:29 A sports watch doesn’t mean luxury, because sport is not necessarily luxury. Rubber is not necessarily luxury. Now when we went to China in 2012 with our Hublot watches, we’ve all the success that Marcus said in Bond Street with you, we’ve, you know, Jay-Z wearing the watch, 50 Cent buying one from me in 2011 or 2010, we went to China and in China we sold nothing, zero, not even one. What? Why?

35:17 Because for the Chinese rubber is rubbish, because for the Chinese sports watch, sport is not luxury, sport is popular. Because of those elements we sold nothing. My son Luc, who was the boss of China, he said to me, “Don’t worry, one day we will sell.” I said, “Yes, one day, but spending money like crazy, sponsoring different people here, we need some return.” He said, “The return will come, just wait for the millennials.”

36:00 I said, “Why the millennials? Which millennials?” In 2011, it was 2012, I said, “The millennials are 12 years old, do you think I can wait 10 years? Okay, then we close the subsidiary and I come back in 10 years.” He said, “No, no, no, no, what?

36:18 The boys and girls that are born in 1980, one day they will buy your brand.” I said, “Why?” “Because you must understand the Chinese mentality. These young people, when they are becoming millionaires or billionaires or whatever, if the way or the day they make money, they will refuse to buy the product of their parents, and their parents are buying this traditional luxury, ultra-slim and, you know, in platinum and blah blah blah, very classical. They are buying this.

36:58 Do you think the young generation will want the watch of Papa? No, they will come to you because you are the alternative.” And you know what happened in 2018? Our biggest customer in the world was the Chinese. It’s our number one market, when in 2012 they didn’t buy a single watch, because it was these traditional Chinese people and they couldn’t understand that luxury can be red gold and rubber, can be red gold and carbon.

37:34 They were on their ideas of the past, and the young generation, they are on the ideas of their own generation, of the future. And so today our biggest market is China.

37:47 Brian Rose: Wow, that’s incredible, from zero in 2012 to biggest market in 2018.

37:52 Jean-Claude Biver: And that’s psychology and marketing and understanding, understanding, understanding. It’s more than, it’s more, it’s not a, it’s a little bit marketing but most is understand, understand, understanding the psychology and catching the new generation, speaking to the new generation.

38:14 It’s not enough to understand, you must also have the response, to have the product for these young people, and these young people, they just got it.

38:23 Brian Rose: Talk to me about that understanding and that branding, because with Omega, when you were with Omega, one of the big strong moves you made was to put Omega watches in the James Bond films. This is before products were being put in films. Yes, you were way ahead of the curve. Yes.

38:40 Brian Rose: Why do that? How’d you even think about something like that, how to execute it, and what was the response?

38:49 Jean-Claude Biver: A young Madame Barzini, a young woman, a young lady having worked at Philip Morris in the Formula One circuit, on the circuit for Philip Morris, for Marlboro in those days. Yeah, she came to me because we had employed her, she came to me and said, “We should go into the new field, James Bond.” “What do you mean?”

39:16 “Yeah, the brother of Broccoli have stopped to fight and now he on production and Universal Studios are planning a new film and we could be in this new film.” I said, “James Bond is for old people, for me it’s also a Bond girl coming out of the sea with the nice white bikini and the white sand and blue sea and blue sky and Sean Connery. That’s for my generation. I want Omega to connect to the new generation.” And she said, “But it will connect, it will be successful amongst the new generation.”

39:55 I said, “I don’t believe you,” and stop, end of the story. She comes back, thank God, and I was so lucky, she comes back a second time and says the same with more details, “Ah, it would be a new actor, he’s great, Pierce Brosnan,” blah blah blah. I said, “Madame Barzini, I told you already, I’m not interested. I’m looking for to connect to young people, not the remake of an old film. Well, and anyhow, you will never be able to beat Sean Connery, he was the best actor ever for James Bond, and also a Londres was the most sexy one,” and end of the story.

40:30 And now comes this, she comes back a certain time. My driving time to go to my office at Omega was one hour and 40 minutes one way and 1 hour and 40 minutes in the secondary back. So after the third time she came, and after the third time I said no, I drove home and I said to myself, “Listen, Biver, you are now more than 40 years old, maybe you should listen to her, because maybe you don’t understand anymore where the future is. Till today you were part of the future, so you knew exactly where the future was going, you were sitting in the front of the future.

41:21 Now you are out of the training, you are no more sitting in the future, so maybe you have to learn.” At that moment, 1993, I was 43 and 44 years old. I said, “Biver, now time has come to learn, because you don’t know anymore on a natural way, you don’t know.” I came back the other day, the next day I asked her to come and I said, “Listen, I want to learn from you, why,” and so much so, she explained everything and she said, “We can, I can make an appointment with Eon Productions and Universal Studios in LA.”

42:04 I said, “Perfect,” and I went to LA, I flew to LA and I met two people, and the people told me, “Listen, you have the possibility to put on the wrist of the Mr. Pierce Brosnan, put on the wrist an Omega watch, and it will cost you so much, 50, $60,000, I don’t remember.” That’s all it was, not so expensive, no, that’s all in those days, ’94, ’95. So I said, “Wow, great, but you know what, I would like to pay 1 million.” And they looked at me, said, “What do you mean?”

42:45 And I told them, I have a theory at Omega, that one plus one must never make two, except in finance, one and one must always make three. And you asked me 160, 60 or 50 thousand or whatever, it was a very small, you ask me, I say now something, you ask me 60,000, I want to give 1 million, and then I want not 1 million 60, I want 2 million, then I have 1 + 1 is 3. And I said, “Listen, such a theory we never heard, but yeah, I see what you say. Okay, you give us one more million, okay, then we can give you 30 second film, no, 15 second film, 30 second film, 40 second film made of the rushes of the original picture and we assemble this and it will look like the real film.”

43:58 I said, “Wow, fantastic.” “We will give you the right to promote this film on different TV channels six months before the film comes out to the public.” Wow, fantastic. “We will give you the picture of Pierce Brosnan dressed as James Bond in tuxedo being in the casino and saying, ‘My name is Bond, James Bond,’ BAM, with the eyes, pinky. You get this picture, you can use this picture six months before the film starts in the country,” etc., etc., etc.

44:36 We got so much, and we got with all this money, or all what we got, we were able to activate our involvement and to say more or less to people, “Listen, if you go to the next James Bond that will come out in six months, look at the watch, that’s probably what you should buy for your husband, or that’s the watch young man you should wear.” So when the film came out, everybody who looked at the watch, because we have prepared six months before, “Wait, wait, wait till the film comes up, you will see the watch, you will see the watch.” So the activation thanks to this million that we added gave us 10, 50 million.

45:29 At the end it was the biggest success. We connected James Bond with an Omega Seamaster, and we were selling nicely six, seven, eight or ten thousand pieces per year, a three thousand, no, yeah, three thousand dollars. One year after the film we were selling fifty thousand, so the result was just magic. And what’s the, why, what is, what lesson can I learn? Number one, you must listen to people, whoever the people are.

46:04 Number two, it’s not enough to listen, you must also learn, because if you listen and you don’t learn, it’s like you go to school and you don’t, so listening is not enough, you must also learn, taking the consequences from what you have listened, listen, and number three, you must be different. You cannot just put the watch on the wrist and say, “I hope consumer will see it.” Come on, you cannot be passive. Hey, hey, hey, one and one must make three. Okay, so you add something and you activate it, boom, easy.

46:40 The result was just glorious.

46:42 Brian Rose: Domino, that’s a great lesson. That’s a great lesson. That’s a great lesson. You once said the innovation doesn’t just come from the top, it’s not just the CEO.

46:51 Jean-Claude Biver: No, it’s everybody in the company. It’s like money, it’s not just to see you that must have money, but then you are running to a disaster one day or the other. One, money must flow down like the rain, and the rain comes from the top. The day the rain comes from the earth, we must be, we must ask ourselves if we are not working on the head, which we’d somehow sometimes I think we are at the moment. So money comes always from the top, the rain comes from the top, innovation comes from the top.

47:31 If the boss is innovative, is already dated to innovation, that goes down to the whole company. If the boss is somebody who shares, it will come down and everybody will start to share. That’s why we have a boss, he he represents a philosophy of behavior, and so I said, if the innovation just comes from the R&D department, but that’s normal, they are paid to innovate. Innovation must come from the receptionist also, but she can only innovate if the whole atmosphere is innovation, and to be innovative you must enable people to speak, you must do, you must make it possible to people to say, you must make it possible to people to be wrong, you must be in a position to forgive mistakes, you must be in a position that you share your visions, you share your doubts.

48:41 So from who are these elements coming? From the boss, the boss of each department, the boss of the marketing department, the boss of sales, and at the end the big boss. So it’s very often from the top that you infuse a spirit, that you infuse a culture, and a company must have a culture. A company is like a person, and which culture does the company have? The culture of the big boss.

49:17 So that is what I say, and therefore when the big boss is orientated innovation, even the receptionist will come one day, say, “Mr. Biver, I have an idea for our reception, that is how we should do it.”

49:32 Brian Rose: Ah, bravo. Some people say you’ve been very lucky in your career. Yes. What you like to say that luck is a process?

49:40 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes. And you have to go and grab your own. Yes, I was lucky and I have, I was not only lucky but I had a lot of help. Luck and help was a big part of my success, or is still a big part of my successes, but what I say to the young people, luck is invisible. It’s like hairs, like threads, they are invisible, they are everywhere.

50:08 Now as they are everywhere, but you cannot see them, but how can I get them, how can I hit them? Because as soon as you hit that, luck will come, and you have luck everywhere. I said, if you sit and if you don’t move, you will never hit them, so stand up and move, and then suddenly you get one and say, “Hey, what has happened? I just got lucky.” So luck comes to people who move.

50:42 Luck doesn’t come to people who stay in bed. So to be dynamic, to be entrepreneur, to move, will necessarily, one day you will hit luck, and the more you move the more luck will come, and the more, like luck brings luck, money makes money, success brings success, and then you start. But if you are pessimistic, if you don’t move, if you, if you, if you are not dying, you will never meet luck.

51:14 Brian Rose: You also once said, don’t let ambition make you impatient, and you tell that story where you worked for Audemars Piguet, right?

51:24 And they asked you to come work for them for half the salary. Yes. No office. Yes. No secretary.

51:33 Yes. No phone. Yes. No credit card. Why would you take that job, and why did you take that job?

51:39 Jean-Claude Biver: Because if I were you, I was in ’74, I was 25 years old. I was 25 years old, that I came back, said to my wife, “Wife, I’m desperate, look, they gave me a half salary, but they said during one year I will learn.” But as I came out of the university I believed I had enough of learning, I wanted to do. But because they offered me for half salary to learn and to go through all the processes of the art, to stay with in the different departments of the production, to stay one month and just to look, to listen and to learn, and I said it’s my passion, probably that it’s worth probably, and I learned enormously, but I learned the most important, I learned to understand the mentality of the watchmakers.

52:49 The watchmakers have a special mentality. They were all, they were all, all, all farmers, they all are, but we’re born in those days at least in farmhouses. They all were making milk, they all had cows, they all had a very special mentality, they all were extremely patient, they were extraordinary accurate, because they were living in these old farmhouses, no opening to the world in those days, a lot of snow, you go from one window to another. Winter, do you have in between ten days where it’s a little bit, I remember when I was living there it was freezing in July, it was freezing in August.

53:36 I wanted to have tomatoes in my garden and somebody said to me, “You will never get tomatoes, they will never become red, David, because here it’s freezing even in July.”

53:50 Brian Rose: Where is this, the Alps?

53:52 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, energy, no, it’s the other, it’s the Jura, which is the smaller Alps, it’s 1,000, it goes up to 1,300 meters, but the climate at a thousand meters is like the climate of the Alps at 2,000. The Christmas trees are growing very slowly, extremely slowly, but as they grow very slowly, I mean this in the, in three years and then this is five years, this in ten years, the wood is extraordinarily compressed and you can make violins with this wood.

54:30 Normally with crisp of a Christmas tree wood you cannot make violins, but here yes, and this wood is extremely expensive because it grows so slowly, and why does it grow slowly? Because the climate is like in two thousand meters in the Alps. And so these people were living there with their special mentality. It’s a valley, to get out of the valley there was always snow, so they could not travel to go out to Geneva, they had to pass through France, and because of the wars in the 18th century, 17th century, it was difficult to connect with Switzerland except in summer.

55:04 So all this has brought to these people a special mentality, very patient, very accurate, very trustful, I know. And so they, the French, when they had to flee France, a few of these French guys were watchmakers, watchmaker masters, they were scientific, and so they said, “We need people to do the operations, and where can we find?” No, nobody was a watchmaker in Switzerland around 1550. Nobody was watching, it didn’t exist. So they said, “We have to teach, because we need help.

55:48 We are engineers, we are, we design the movement, we are, we are mathematicians, we are, but we need people to execute.” So they went to these farmhouses and they said, “You poor people, you can make money in winter. In winter time you have, you have nothing to do except stay at home and, and, and flip the snow away and feed the cows, that’s all. So we will give you a little job, you polish wheels.” So they gave them hundred fifty or three hundred wheels to be polished, and when they came back in spring to collect this 150 or 300 wheels, the French looked at it.

56:35 Wow, what a great job these guys did, look at that, but that’s me, that’s perfection. And they paid for their three hundred, and slowly, slowly these farmers they said, “Oh hey, brother, you should also do it, it makes you make more money than with our cows and our milk.” So the brother started to also polish and then the other brother too, and slowly, slowly they learned the art, because by doing all the polishing of all the parts, at the end they knew how to build a watch, and so around 1660, 1715 we see the first farmers giving up to farm and concentrating 365 days on making watches, and that is where the watchmaking art is born, in the farmhouses of this Jura that goes from Geneva to Basel.

57:40 And this is why I make cheese. I offer cheese for Christmas to all my customers because, and I will notice why cheese, because number one, it’s a present of myself. If I buy a wonderful Hermès bag or Hermès tie, okay, I only need money, but if I offer something from me, my cheese, my cows, and in addition it’s related to my art, and I have a description where people understand, so not only is it a great present but I teach also, I teach to people, I evolve where we come from.

58:22 So this is why I have cheese, because it connects me to the origin of my passion, and my passion has started in the farmhouses in the 16th century.

58:33 Brian Rose: I would have never guessed watchmakers came from farmhouses. Yes. Can I get some of your cheese this year? Yes, yes.

58:42 Brian Rose: Talk to me about the 1970s, the quartz watch is introduced, which probably for the first time in history was able to keep cheaply more correct time, and the amazing mechanical devices developed by these farm, at farmhouse, the whole industry is panicking, this little tiny crystal that is in radios now can now keep this really accurate time, our whole industry is gonna be gone. You saw things differently. Tell me about that time, what was it like and how did you see through this?

59:15 Jean-Claude Biver: I saw through this because I was a hippie, and I saw through it because being a hippie I learned a lot about nature and about what’s the sense of my life and about eternity, and I learned that, I said that probably before, that you, that technology goes to the future by destroying the past. And I was the enemy in those days of anything that has something to do with battery, because we believed in the bad radiations of batteries, because in the 70s batteries had not the best material inside, they had mercury, they had lithium, a lot of these materials are now forbidden. Batteries are safe today, but in the past, in the 60s and 70s, batteries didn’t have the best reputation, at least not among the hippies.

1:00:22 So I knew that if you would wear on your wrist 24 hours a day a battery with bad radiation, it could even bring you cancer. That was my belief, because of this belief I said there is only one exit, it’s to say no to the battery and yes to the art. And I also said there must be a market, because I was not the only hippie. Hippie was a generation, so I said we are a billion of hippies in the world, and 1 billion, from these billion guys like me I must find thousand who buy my watch.

1:01:10 From 1 billion, a thousand, that’s a very small proportion, so we have a huge market. That’s all my generation who believes like me. That is the strength of a generation. That is why I say these millennials born in 2000, in 2035, it will not be a few guys, there will be 3, 3 billion people who will believe the same way, we will behave the same way, and that’s in 2035. That’s why I tell you that century will change completely.

1:01:43 So I said, voila, I will make a brand where I will promote and say very loudly, “We have never made a quartz watch and we will never do,” and people will be shocked. What, what is he saying? He’s saying he’s never made a quartz and he will never do, are they crazy? And because people ask the question, they get the answer: no, he’s not crazy, he tells you that he is doing, he’s making art, he’s not an industrial product, and number 2, he is also telling you that putting a battery close to your body and to your veins and through the radiation in our body, we have radiation and on this radiation you putting a battery with lithium and mercury, are you crazy or what?

1:02:36 So that was the, the, the, the thinking, and I was hundred percent sure that we would succeed because I was from that generation and I knew our mentality, and I spoke to my people, that my brothers, and I had 1 billion brothers. If we have 1 billion brothers in life, you can only succeed, and the result was, as I said, success, and we went like Confucius, who we didn’t swim with the current, we went against the current, and salmon goes against the current where the water is very clean and where you can even drink it. So we succeeded because we were listening to our own generation and we are thinking like our own generation, and our generation was the generation that was making the future.

1:03:36 I am born in the 40s, of course, in the 80s I was 40 years old and I was shaping my century, like this millennial in 2040 they will shape their century because they are born in 2000. That’s why I can say that this century will start in 2040, because I have seen it myself when we were born in the forties, in the 80s we had the power. We were, they call it, they call it the baby boomers, the baby boomers were making the, the, the future, and so the timepiece was saved, and people now started to respect the art of the timepiece, and now that’s what all luxury watches have, they are mechanical toys.

1:04:19 That’s why they say sometimes when they speak about me, some jewellers, so even some watchmakers, that I have been one of the guys who brought the traditional watchmaking out, back again to life when everybody thought the future is quartz, and I was the only one to say, “Oh no, no, the future is not quartz.”

1:04:43 Brian Rose: You ever have it sometimes of going to speak with the dead and also going to ask mountains questions? Can you talk a bit about these practices?

1:04:54 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, in the cemeteries you have a lot of people who can talk and they have a lot of things to say from their own experience, and if you listen to the cemeteries, it’s better than a book, because you get all these gradations, all these waves.

1:05:13 I live close to a monastery that was built in the 12th century, and in those days they were building monasteries not for the, because it was beautiful, or they were building it because of the wave of the radiations. It’s like your cat or your dog, it won’t sleep where they, in the sleeping room, it sleeps where it feels the right foundations. They have the instinct, we have lost it, because we, you know, we are not anymore wild, we have lost instinct, we have lost perception, we have lost intuition, and that’s what I say to the students: the more you learn technocracy, the more you will lose your instinct, and you will always go through analyses, you will never believe anymore your nose.

1:06:13 So learn a lot of technocracy but please don’t use technocracy to guide you. You can double-check, okay, but keep your nose, keep your instinct, because that is your power. Because with the artificial intelligence there is only the instinct and the intuition which eventually the Intel, the artificial intelligence cannot, cannot copy. It can copy anything and do better than we, but intuition cannot. A computer has no intuition, so keep these intuitions, don’t let it go, and we have lost it, and we have also lost it because the religion wanted us to lose it.

1:06:57 So we said nobody can see the future and nobody knows what happens tomorrow. Yes, we know. My farmer tells me the summer will be hot. He tells me this in May, in March. I said, “How do you know?”

1:07:14 “Because the way the leaves are growing tells me that the summer will be hot.” The first time he told me and now I want to check who got damned. Summer was hot and dry. So this is all experience and intuition, and horoscope. The horoscope in the, at the period of the, the Chinese or the Greek, it was a science, it was, they taught, they were teaching it at the universities, and we have totally said finished, nobody can tell you, it’s not true.

1:07:51 And I believe in all this, I believe in what you cannot see, and I think sometimes what you cannot see is more important than what you can see. So that’s my way of living, the radiations, the intuition. It is for me elementary, it is for me a strength and not a weakness, but it’s difficult when you have been instructed always to check the theory, this and that and that, so slowly, slowly you forget your intuition and you only look at numbers and analyses and number blah blah blah.

1:08:34 I say yes, that’s okay, good, good, good, it’s perfect, we have it, but it should not help, it should only help to manage it, it shall not be the monitoring model. It is like in a plane, you can check at which altitude you are, okay, it’s enough, it’s an assistant, but don’t fly well according to the altitude you have, you must check the altitude, but they did want to help you, it won’t give you the direction to fly.

1:09:05 Brian Rose: And why do you ask questions of mountains?

1:09:08 Jean-Claude Biver: Mountains is the same, you know. So yes, for the symmetry, so I developed this theory when I was at Omega. I was at Omega in 1992, and one day I said, Omega is now one hundred thirty something years old, they have probably employed one thousand people per year, that gives you a huge number of people that have been concentrating, in thinking about Omega. When on Christmas time in our countries, let’s say in Europe, everybody is occupied to think positive, Christmas, Christmas present, family gathering, there is absolutely a very positive vibration going on, which we feel or not, but there is a vibration.

1:10:12 If millions of people are thinking positive, are thinking love, then something happens. That’s my belief and I’m 100 percent sure it works that way. Now if millions of people have thought for Omega, Omega, Omega, this cannot disappear, these vibrations are still there, we must just catch them. So I said, guys, we have to go to the cemetery where the most of the watchmakers are buried. In those days it was on these valleys and these mountains where the people were born and where the people were buried, and I say we have to go to the cemetery and we let us, we let the people tell us their story.

1:11:06 And so I taught my people to go to the cemetery and to see, and some came back and said, “I didn’t hear anything.” I said, “Never mind, you got vibrations, and whatever you do tomorrow will be influenced, but because you have indirectly listened to the people.” You must master, I used to say, the invisible visibility. What you cannot see is the most important and this must be mastered and this you must learn. What people can see, everybody can see, that’s not relevant.

1:11:42 The invisible must be mastered. And so I developed this concerning myself. I need the mountains, I need the forest, I need the trees, I need the birds, I need the flowers, flowers, trees, birds, stones, that’s my life, that’s my religion, and I pray not in a cathedral, I pray in the cathedral of nature, and the cathedral of nature is the forest, and when I go into the forest at five o’clock in the morning, the smell, and I say to the forest, “Thank you for spraying this incredible smell.”

1:12:30 Then I hear a bird, I said, “Hey, birds, you singing the opera for me, thank you, thank you. I mean, the opera I love, I love your music.” And then slowly, slowly the sun comes and I see a yellow flower and I see a blue flower, I say to the flowers, “Ah, thank you for giving me all this joy in my eyes.” Colors are giving joy, colors are giving optimism, colors are giving hope. So by doing this more or less in the past every morning, that’s my way to say thank you to God and that’s my way to pray.

1:13:15 So I don’t need to go to church, I am in the church, I’m in the church of life, I’m in the church of nature, that’s my religion, and that’s how I behave, and I swear, I called my wife today, I said, “I’m coming home tomorrow, Saturday, I need to go to the forest, because it’s the birthday of one of my children.” I said I would, and she said, “But,” I said, “Yes, I will be there to the birthday at 4 o’clock, 3 o’clock, but in the morning I need to go to my cathedral to pray, and that is my forest, that’s my birds, that’s my flowers, and they are there, they’re waiting for me.”

1:14:04 Brian Rose: And you’re up at 4 a.m. every day?

1:14:07 Yes.

1:14:07 Brian Rose: You always get up early?

1:14:10 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, because the president of Switzerland in 1983, I was 34 years old, he gave me an appointment at 5 o’clock in the morning, and my secretary said to me, “Mr. Biver, you don’t forget tomorrow 5 o’clock you meet the president.” I said, “5 o’clock?” “Yes.”

1:14:35 “5 o’clock in the morning? No, cannot be, he’s the president of Switzerland, he doesn’t give an appointment at 5:00.” “It’s 5 p.m.,” not a.m. She said, “I checked, I called his secretary, it is 5 a.m.” That’s why I tell you at 5:00 a.m.

1:14:55 I went to the president today, to the castle, where, yes, his office. I had instructions where to follow, all the instructions, and suddenly the light became green, bomb, and it was written “enter,” and I entered, and the guy who I never met him before, I saw him on TV, he was sitting 15 meters because he was sitting in his office, and so I walked, and at a certain moment I was going to say, “Good morning, Mr. President.” I didn’t want to shout from the, I wanted to wait till I’m at least close enough to him, but before I had the chance to say that, he said, “Biver.”

1:15:45 I didn’t say Mr., he said, “Biver, you know why you are here at 5:00?” I said f***, he said, he said “Biver” to me, he doesn’t say mister, and so he thinks I’m a child because I looked young, blond, 33 years old. So I said, “Yes, yes, I know.” And then I was close, “Oh yeah, sit down.” Then I sit.

1:16:09 “I will explain you now. Listen, hey, let’s stop, you work 200 days a year, okay, 200 days?” “Yes.” “You work two hours more than all your competitors, 300 days, two hours more, that’s 600 hours.” “Yes.”

1:16:29 “Your competition works 40 hours per week. If you work 600 hours more, divided by 40 hours per week, that’s 15 weeks. Yes, can you imagine 15 weeks, with a small February, that’s January, February, March, April, by working only two little hours more per day and only not the whole year, only during 300 days, that gives you four months ahead of competition. That’s why you are here at 5:00, because from now on I want you every morning to be at 5 o’clock in your factory.

1:17:11 Thank you, Biver, bye.” It was seven minutes past 5:00. I had a little Golf, Volkswagen Golf car, white Golf car. I entered into my car, I said, “It’s seven minutes past 5:00, what do I do now? I said I don’t go back home, my wife would say you wake me up now, two times per night.”

1:17:35 I go to the railway station because the restaurant is open there, was a hockey team game between Lausanne and another sports, another team, and they were celebrating, drinking the last beer, they were all half drunk. I said, “I cannot go there.” So I went to my office, and it was the first time in my life that I was around 5:30 in my office, and since then I said the president is right, four months ahead by two small hours of more, so from now on I will be every morning at 5:00 in my factory, and every morning at 5:00 I was in my factory, and still today when I have a lot to do, sometimes it’s three o’clock, sometimes it’s four, sometimes five, sometimes it’s also six, but I am still very often the first one to put light in the factory.

1:18:42 Brian Rose: Hmm, what about sleep?

1:18:44 Jean-Claude Biver: I need sleep like most of the people, but I can sleep partially. I can sleep in the taxi, I can sleep in the waiting room of the dentist while other people, aha, it’s very soon, it’s my turn, and I sleep. I sleep in the plane. I came back yesterday from Mexico, no, yeah, Mexico was yesterday, but I was in Singapore last Sunday, I came back last Sunday from Singapore, 12 hours and 50 minutes in plane, the flight took because of the wind and etc.

1:19:24 I slept 12 hours, they woke me up 50 minutes before landing because they had to clean the cabin, and I had slept 12 hours with no pill, nothing, just because I was tired. So I can sleep wherever when it’s possible, but at home I go to bed not so early, I go to bed at 10:00 and I get up at 3, 4, so if you go to 10 you sleep 6 hours, and I think for me 6 hours is what I need.

1:19:55 Brian Rose: Okay, and do you think most people should get up earlier and work harder and stay ahead of the competition?

1:20:04 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, yes, that’s at least my opinion. Uh, not everybody and not every political party is sharing this principle, but it’s my principle. I believe if you are in business, be the first, be different, be unique and work hard. Now I was a hippie, I hated to work, and I understand that people hate to work, and I’m grateful that we installed the weekends, and then when I see the weekend I see the joy of the people for Friday evening and I see the desperate Monday morning, and I say, and I said it to myself when I was a hippie, we should have our job as our passion.

1:20:57 We should be like a guitar player, they don’t say I’m gonna work Monday morning to play guitar, or football player, he doesn’t say I go work, he said I go training. So we should transform our job into our passion, and if you are, let’s say, ten hours per day in your passion, you don’t get the impression at the end of the day that you have worked, you have enjoyed. Sometimes you have problems, sometimes it’s difficult, okay, but you are in your environment, you are not separate.

1:21:36 And many people have passion weekends, and the we, the five days week they work, and I say to all the students, “Come on guys, try to have your job as a passion.” Once you have this as a passion you don’t work anymore, you you got, you will be free, you will not feel the pressure of work, because work I can accept, and me, even me, I hate to work, I want to enjoy, but I cannot enjoy if I have to do things which I don’t like. So try to integrate your job and your passion, or try to work in your passion.

1:22:21 Brian Rose: How do you find your passion? Yes. Watches, that’s your passion. How does someone find their passion? How do you tell the kids to find their passion?

1:22:29 Jean-Claude Biver: Be curious. And I said to the kids, the curiosity brings you maybe to your passion. Look at flowers, why do you have yellow tulips and red tulips? It’s the same salt, and why can the same salt of tulip have five colors? How come?

1:22:54 If you are not curious, you will never ask the question and you will never find the answer, and it’s not important that you know why do you have tulips that are yellow and others that are red, not important, but what is important, because of your curiosity you might Google and look, color of tulips, and you might find out why, and why, why, searching, by getting, you enter the world of biology and you, and you will discover that this world is so beautiful that they are like miracles, and you might develop a passion for tulips, and you might one day, because you married your girlfriend, she came from Venezuela, and you might go to Venezuela and buy thousand acres of land, and you might have the best tulips of the world, and you will sell tulips and you will become the Pope of tulips, who knows, but all this is only possible if you are curious.

1:24:08 If you have no curiosity, if you are passive, you will never meet your passion, because God didn’t give you a passion, because God gives only to a few people passion. He gave it to Mozart, he gave it to Picasso, but to normal people he didn’t give a passion, and I was normal people, I didn’t have passion. As I didn’t have any passion, I was looking for one, and a friend of mine said to me, “Check, what was the toy you liked the most?” I said, “It was a steam machine.”

1:24:45 “I cannot take the steam machine as a passion.” “The toy,” he said, “Yes, but you were a boy, you were a baby, now you are an adult, your steam machine has also become adult, so the steam machine can be something different.” “A what? What is a machine?” “A watch, eyes, wheels, watch has, yeah, teeth, they go one in one.”

1:25:15 “Ah, yes.” “So what?” “Yeah, yes, my toy that was a steam machine has ended up to be a watch, and I from a little baby decide I have ended up this, so that can be my passion.” And I said, “Okay, I want watches to become my passion,” and it became my passion. So it’s a passion that I have, that I was looking for it.

1:25:44 I’m not born with a natural passion for watches, it’s a passion that I have looked, I wanted to take it, because I said if I can take my watches as a passion and if I can find a job in that industry, wow, then I will be free, I will never get the feeling that I work. So I imported a passion, and what I did everybody can do, but you need a little bit of curiosity.

1:26:14 Brian Rose: Why are you giving back so much now? A lot of your life has been,

1:26:19 Jean-Claude Biver: because I got a lot. The more you got, the more you must give back, and if you don’t give back, then your life has been useless.

1:26:30 Life of any human being that has only been important for him or her, who cares? We are in, and that’s my life, and that’s the chain, I must track, connect them. I’m important because I’m part of a connection. If this is the chain and I’m here, okay, useless, forget you, you have lived for you, okay, good, bravo, but useless. The real use is I connect, and you only connect by giving back.

1:27:09 Brian Rose: When did you figure this out?

1:27:12 Jean-Claude Biver: No, I know already minimum 40 years. Okay, the hippie commune, we always said we must die before we must die, this is natural, but before we die we should look back and we should see two traces. One trace here in the back, that’s the trace of the love, that’s our behavior, that’s the moral, that’s the ethic behavior, and that’s the love we have. Wow, big trace of love, and then this side, that’s in the job, that’s what you have created in your job.

1:27:59 If you can die and if you have the privilege before dying to see those two traces, you will die in peace, and you will die rich, rich of two big traces that you leave behind you. If there is nothing behind you, you will die poor and you will even regret, and you will be sad to die, while seeing the two traces you will be able to say, “I did it. Wow, I can live proud, I did it.” That was our belief in the 60s. I still have the same belief.

1:28:44 So when did I realize that we have to connect and give back? I would say it was already there in the 60s. So as again, I could tell you so many examples of my behavior, of my life, of my philosophy, that comes directly from the hippie movement. That is why I say what a pity that the hippie movement doesn’t exist anymore. We should reinvent it, we should reanimate it with other, with today’s mentality, but the young people need, they would need, I believe, a hippie movement again, because for me it has totally traced my life, my professional life, and my private life has been influenced 100% by the hippies.

1:29:32 Brian Rose: What’s the future of the watchmaking industry?

1:29:35 Jean-Claude Biver: Huge, because what’s the future of eternity? Enormous, because eternity is what we will need, because we are surrounded by, and we are going to die, we are surrounded only by products that are going to die. Everything we have is going to die, everything except art. If you have a piece of art, it will not die, because it will stay there after you, it will be there forever, and what is art?

1:30:04 It’s painting, sculpture, whatever, and art is also watches, because you have the watchmaking industry and you have the watchmaking art, and the watchmaking art is eternal, and we will need. You think in the 12th or the 13th century people didn’t care about eternity because they were not surrounded by products that became obsolete, nothing was obsolete in those days. Obsolescence is only born because of the industrial process, technology. It goes to the future, as I said before, by destroying the past.

1:30:40 In the 13th century they had no technology, everything was eternal, so the eternity was natural. Today eternity is rare. Wow, so out and inclusive, the watchmaking art has a huge potential, because we will need more and more to connect to eternity.

1:31:02 Brian Rose: Hmm, you collect Patek Philippe watches and their brand is, we see the advertisements, the father’s, you’re passing it on to the son, you don’t own a Patek Philippe, you pass it to the next generation. Why do you love those watches?

1:31:22 Jean-Claude Biver: Because of what you just said, because it’s not the only one, a brand that is that is eternal, but I like it mainly because I believe that if they would stop to promote, if they would close the factory, in 50 years they would still be number one, because what they did in their past is so rich that it influences the next 50 years, and they are the, yeah, they are the reference. Now some people say, can you compare with cars? I said it’s difficult, but if I would mention one, I would say Ferrari.

1:32:12 Ferrari, if they win a Grand Prix or if they don’t, nobody cares, Ferrari is a legend. It’s a myth.

1:32:21 Brian Rose: Yeah, but also Bentley.

1:32:23 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, Bentley’s not bad, but it’s not to say Ferrari. Yeah, but I also, me, I have a Bentley, I drive a Bentley, but I must accept Ferrari, sorry, so it’s Ferrari.

1:32:38 So somehow it’s the same with Patek. Patek makes wonderful watches, I love my watches, it’s my blood, it’s my brain, it’s my vision, it’s my hope, it’s my love, my watch, and it’s called Hublot, but I must be open and I must recognize that Patek I cannot be like an ayatollah, as like the religion. I like every religion provided they say God is love. Whoever tells me God is love, I say okay, I am a member of your religion, because I cannot be against a religion who says God is love and all we need is love.

1:33:23 So all the religions will say we are love, I say okay, come on guys, we are only all one.

1:33:28 Brian Rose: You are a hippie, you are a hippie.

1:33:31 Jean-Claude Biver: Yeah, exactly, I am still a hippie, I haven’t changed. That’s a drama for certain people, for me it’s a, it’s a big, I said then I didn’t change and I don’t want to change.

1:33:41 Brian Rose: And what are you doing, Jean-Claude, for the next five years, whatever, what is your life like?

1:33:47 Are you good?

1:33:48 Jean-Claude Biver: Hi, I have a, I have a project, a hope, a doubt and a vision. It’s to make my own brand with my son, or eventually with other kids, if, but all my children are more or less in position except the youngest one, he is 19, and I have the dream to work with him and to develop my brand, and he would continue it after my, after I died. So my dream is to transfer and to give back to him all my professional knowledge, to give back my love. I give to every child, but knowledge I cannot give to every child because they have their own business and they are so, there’s one little with who we’re still studying.

1:34:52 That’s a dream, it’s also a hope, and it’s also a doubt, because I’m not sure if I should really do that at 71 years old, to start again from nowhere.

1:35:05 Brian Rose: Of course you should.

1:35:07 Jean-Claude Biver: Oh yes, you think so? Yes, I do. And you know that?

1:35:12 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, what I haven’t pushed on the green button because, I this morning I said to my wife, it was in the car, that I doubt, and she said, “Now do it, come on,” blah blah blah blah blah blah, you spoke like you, and I said, “Yes, okay, I will have to push on the button.” So that, if I put this button till the end of the year, I let’s say I have two months left to push red button or green button. If I push this green button, then my project the next five years or ten years, exactly twenty years, twenty, a few hundred years, 20, 20, yeah, 20.

1:35:49 Yeah, I have a good health, at 20 I will be there at 90.

1:35:53 Brian Rose: Yes. You love watches?

1:35:54 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, it’s my passion, passion, my passion.

1:35:57 Brian Rose: So you must do it.

1:35:58 Yes.

1:35:59 Brian Rose: What watch are you wearing? Why now and why this?

1:36:04 Jean-Claude Biver: This is a watch that has been given by the CEO of Hublot to me as my birthday present, poof, and I was so amazed that he would offer me such a watch. It’s a totally transparent sapphire watch.

1:36:26 I know how expensive it is, I know how much it requires knowledge and work to be made, because it comes from a stone, a sapphire stone, it’s absolutely incredible. And because Super Cooper, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s sapphire Hublot.

1:36:44 Brian Rose: Wow, totally transparent. See them on close-up means fantastic. Oh my gosh, okay.

1:36:50 Brian Rose: And that was for your birthday?

1:36:52 Jean-Claude Biver: That’s for my 70th birthday, I got this as a present from my CEO. Can you imagine, that tells you also the relationship we have. It’s super light, very nice, light and transparent.

1:37:03 Brian Rose: Wow, so there’s a metaphor for life there.

1:37:06 Jean-Claude Biver: So I said I would have to take my actual watch away. I’m wearing a prototype from 2006, Hublot Big Bang all black, to me, Chrono. Wow, since 2006, always, always, always, always, always, always, and I even believe my Hublot brings me luck and happiness. But as I received this on the 20th of September, since the 20th of September, it’s very soon a month, I have worn only as a homage to Ricardo who offered me this watch. I said I must wear it, and it’s the first for one month that my watch is in the drawer at home, and I said today to my wife, “Can you put it in the safe?”

1:37:57 Because it’s only in my office on the drawer, you never know what. So I have for the first time another watch, so this is a present from my CEO, and people ask me sometimes what is your biggest success, I said my biggest success, he’s called Ricardo Guadalupe, because this young guy joined me in 1982 and he started in the logistic department, and slowly, slowly he grew up with me in Hublot.

1:38:26 Brian Rose: Yeah, at Hublot, he grew up with me.

1:38:29 Jean-Claude Biver: No, he joined me at Blancpain, my first Blancpain.

1:38:33 Yeah, and he grew up with me and now he’s the CEO, and I realized that I have built up so many young people, the CEO of Rolex is also one of my protégés, and I have made so many people, I’ve given a job to so many people and made so many people happy, that this is my biggest success, much more than the brands. It’s the people that I have grown up, it’s the people to whom I’ve given a job, it’s the people who have made, who have met, I have made happy, and you know, who have given a job, that is my success. Okay, the brand also, but first it’s the people.

1:39:19 And because of Ricardo, he’s present, I say, “I’m gonna wear you,” and I wear this one.

1:39:24 Brian Rose: And it gives you love? Yes. If I were to ask Ricardo and some of your protégés, what is Jean-Claude’s superpower, how are you able to do everything you do in your life, what do you think they would tell me? What would they say?

1:39:37 Jean-Claude Biver: They would say he’s a passionate man, and passion goes above the mountains. With passion you climb everywhere, that’s it. Because you know, passion, passion is love. Look, people, young people, when they fall in love, they’re capable to do anything. To see the fiancée, they can cross the river even if they cannot swim, and suddenly they get to the other side, they don’t know how.

1:40:05 So love goes, love is above all, and they, I think my people would say that I’m passionate and passion is driving me, but passion drives also my team, because passion comes from the boss and it goes down. You know, moral behavior, if you behave at the top, people will behave in the whole chain. If you behave bad at the top, don’t expect people to behave good under you. Yeah.

1:40:35 Brian Rose: What was the best day of your life and the worst day of your life?

1:40:40 Jean-Claude Biver: The best day of my life, yeah, I had several, it was the birth of my kids. What can you expect better? You are present, you see a miracle. Wow, and you see somehow eternity, it means that the cat that keep the baby is born, but the baby will take over you, because he will survive and you will die in 20 years or 30 years, whatever, so the baby is the future. So you see a miracle and you see eternity, connecting time.

1:41:20 Brian Rose: Like a wife?

1:41:21 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, it’s better, woman you cannot get.

1:41:25 Brian Rose: Okay, and what about the worst time?

1:41:28 Jean-Claude Biver: I think the worst was my divorce, because you work too much probably, and I was too young and I thought love you get it, and in fact I learned that love you give it. It’s a big different, that’s a big difference.

1:41:46 Yes, what I had to learn it through a defeat, through a mistake, and this is also what I say to my people, don’t be afraid of mistakes, every mistake is a learning process, just don’t do two times the same mistake, because if you do two times the same thing you don’t progress, but you do this mistake tomorrow, this one after the, this one, this one, this one, and suddenly one day you are the mistake is the learning, the necessary learning process of human beings. Einstein said the knowledge of a person is the accumulation of all his mistakes and all his experiences, the rest is information. It means your value is all your mistakes which you have done which you don’t do anymore, from which you have learned, all the experiences you had in your job, and the rest, that’s information, your books, your theories, that’s an information, but your real value is the accumulation of all you did wrong, a rope, which now you know how to do right, and all the experiences you went through in your life, that’s your asset, not a f***ing diploma and the things and this and that, that’s information.

1:43:22 But very often the HR departments, they look at the information, that there are the guys good, you know, he did this and this, come on, this is just information.

1:43:40 Brian Rose: Jean- Claude, what scares you?

1:43:43 Jean-Claude Biver: An accident of one of my children. The children, I say to God, please anything bad has to go to the kids, put it on me, save them, put it on me, cut me the two legs, not to make it so, I’m scared that God protects my kids. Okay, okay.

1:44:09 Brian Rose: And what keeps you awake at night?

1:44:11 Jean-Claude Biver: Awake, yeah, very often the doubt. The doubt looked at my and my head and say, “Hey, you sleeping? Come on, we have to discuss. Well, I want to know now for tomorrow, are you going to make Brenn or not?”

1:44:26 I said, “F***, let me sleep.” “No, no, no, no, no, no, come on, get up.” Then I get up and go to the kitchen, I make a coffee, okay, doubt, I could go, then I go to a kitchen, I make a coffee, and now we sit in the office, “Come on, and now take a paper and write what is positive, what is negative.”

1:44:46 Brian Rose: Right, so the doubt keeps me awake. Okay, all right.

1:44:49 Brian Rose: And what about the world? When you look at the world, does it make you optimistic?

1:44:54 Jean-Claude Biver: No, mistake, it makes me pessimistic, but it makes me optimistic.

1:44:58 Brian Rose: Why, why pessimistic?

1:44:59 Jean-Claude Biver: Because I see what is happening now.

1:45:01 Optimistic because the millennials in 2030 will be, will fascinate, they will shape the century, and they have been, that God has decided that this generation, millennials, will save planet Earth, the new hippies, we hope they will save the world. There, it’s like a destiny, and I see it with the last child, 19 years old now, 19 years old, he’s a typical millennial, 19 years old, same education as all the others, and the guy is totally different, his perception, his relation to food, his relation to animals, to nature, to, to money, God, to property, he’s totally different, and he got the same, in the same family, got the same education, same watch passed to him as well. Yeah, God has decided that the new generation will save the planet and they will, and that makes me optimist.

1:46:04 If I would not see the future in the new generation I would be very pessimistic. Lost.

1:46:14 Brian Rose: Okay, you could, you just convinced me. Jean- Claude, I always ask a few questions at the end and ask you, if you could pick up a phone, a magic phone, and call up the twenty-year-old Jean-Claude, I don’t know where you are at this point, it’s the 60s, maybe you’re a hippie, and give him some advice based on everything you know now, what would you tell him?

1:46:53 Jean-Claude Biver: also tell him, if you have a relationship, never forget that in a relation you are three people, and he would say, “Sorry, in a relation we are two, my girlfriend and myself.”

1:47:12 No, you are three. Who is the third one? The couple. You must care about you, she must care about her, but you must also care about the couple. With my second wife, every Tuesday we go out for dinner, just the two, to keep the couple.

1:47:34 It’s not enough to take care of her and take care of you, and she takes care of you and she takes care of her, that’s okay, but then we must take care of the couple to keep the relationship. Like with the kids, I used to go with every child to London, one a weekend, or to Milano or wherever, without my wife, without Mama. Why? Because I want to create complicity between the father and the son, of the father and the daughter. We go also all together, yes, but the complicity Papa and son or Mama and son is also important, and it’s totally different if you are alone with your daughter or if you are the whole family.

1:48:29 So that we must understand we always have to take care of the group. The couple is an important, and I say to my friends who are lawyers, I said instead of reading, when somebody gets married, the Bible or nothing of the back, tell them, from today on you will be three people, and take care of each, but also please take care of the couple, which is a person in itself, and the couple needs you. You need to devote time to the couple, to the two, because if you don’t do that, the two will suddenly separate and they will lose complicity, and then you will have your world and she will have her world, and then love gets shaky.

1:49:26 Brian Rose: It’s good advice. Second part of that question, Jean-Claude, best advice you’ve ever received, could have been as a watchmaker, as a businessman, what advice you’ve ever received from, maybe from a parent or from a watchmaker or from a professor, good advice that was given to you?

1:49:57 Jean-Claude Biver: Business-wise it’s the two hours more a day, because I followed it. On moral behavior it is you must give love, not take love. That was a very good advice.

1:50:14 You must first give and then you can expect eventually to get back, but give it and give it with no expectation, it will come. That’s a very good advice, in which I didn’t believe so much in the beginning when I was young,

1:50:30 Brian Rose: but now you do. All right, last part. To the 20 year old who’s watching us out there right now, are listening to us, advice to them. You’ve already said they will be the future, they are the 21st century.

1:50:44 What advice do you give to them?

1:50:48 Jean-Claude Biver: Connect. Don’t forget we are a child, everybody should be respected, everybody is useful, everybody belongs, we are an ecosystem. If you cut the tree, it’s like you cut the part of your finger. If you walk on the flower that is on the grass and you see the flower and you walk on it, but it’s like if you walk on your own teeth.

1:51:23 So don’t forget, guys, we are an ecosystem and you are one of the members of this beautiful ecosystem, and if you don’t respect flowers, if you don’t respect animals, that is like if you wouldn’t respect yourself, and who are you? A shame if you don’t respect yourself. So the ecosystem, we must become conscious that we live in an ecosystem where everything is interconnected. If I go in the middle of the sea and I put in the international zone and I clean my boat, or I put the radioactive waste and I put it down 10,000 meters undersea, I pollute my, I see.

1:52:22 Yeah, but it’s in the middle, nobody knows, there is no middle, we are all one. That is what I would tell the next generation, not never to forget, but I think it will not be necessary to tell them because they know it, they’re aware of the, we just the older, we were not aware of the ecosystem, we thought if there is a pollution in Liverpool or Manchester, who cares, it’s far away. It’s here, it’s not fun working.

1:52:57 Brian Rose: I agree with you, it’s a powerful message and I hope they get it, because if they do we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be okay.

1:53:07 Yeah, we’re okay. Jean-Claude, uh, thank you so much for coming and dropping all of this wisdom on us. I thought that today was the first time we’ve ever met, but actually that’s not true, because we met that day when I went into Marcus and I saw this watch, because I looked at all the other watches there but this one spoke to me, this one had passion, it was different, right, it was first, it was unique. Yeah, and I wanted this to be a part of who I was, and I wore this around and it always, I felt loved, I felt something from it.

1:53:40 I used to wear it all the time to work and outside of work, and now I finally understand what you’re talking about, and to be honest I haven’t been wearing it, I will only wear it now, only for episodes, but I’m gonna start wearing this because it means a lot to me, so thank you for that.

1:53:57 Jean-Claude Biver: That was my biggest success of today, what you just said. Yeah, oh, oh yeah, for the, of the week I mean, because that’s exactly what I’m working for, that’s, you said what that’s the reason why I’m here, why I’m doing the job, and there’s love here.

1:54:12 Brian Rose: Yes, and there’s passion, and every day I can see it and I feel it and I look at it and it reminds me that I’m surrounded by other humans who are doing things that are passionate and lovely, and it makes me happy to be alive, to know that there’s something like this here, and reminds me it’s beautiful to be human. Right, so Jean-Claude, thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed this, I think everyone will as well. I look forward to getting your cheese.

1:54:37 Jean-Claude Biver: Yes, I look forward to, you have to give me the address where I should send it.

1:54:41 I will give you, stay somewhere for a week or two weeks, I’ll give you my home address,

1:54:48 Brian Rose: and also I look forward to your new brand, let me know when you press the button.

1:54:55 Jean-Claude Biver: I relent, you know, and come back, and when you press the green button we can talk all about your new brands.

1:55:04 Brian Rose: Okay, okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Brian, appreciate it. Thank you very much.