From Working For Steve Jobs To Running A Sustainable Restaurant Group with Martin Morales

Your Mentor for the next 40 Minutes has had probably the most diverse and interesting career journeys of anyone we’ve ever met.

He’s gone from launching some of the most successful bands in the world like the Jonas Brothers in his early music career, to working with Steve Jobs as part of the team that launched iTunes in Europe taking it from revenues of zero to £500m in three years and in more recent times he is best know as a world renown chef and restaurateur, responsible for Cerviche - a business built on his passion for Peruvian food and culture, which at one point was the fastest growing restaurant group in the UK with a turnover of more than £10m.

Martin shared some truly inspiring stories with me in today’s episode - from having a hugely successful corporate career to the ups and downs from his start up experience, which including scaling, restructuring and eventually exiting Cerviche. He shared some candid advice, including:

• How to build a loyal team working towards the same goal, whether that’s launching a singer-songwriter or a central London restaurant

• The importance of diplomacy when you are driving change in a big organisation and working with tough, uncompromising characters

• And what it takes to turn your passion into a viable business that can attract investors and, most importantly, customers.

Despite his successes Martin is such a humble and lovely man who we’ve had the privilege to get to know a bit in recent times through our respective roles as board advisors at the new for good accelerator Unrest.

Martin’s upbringing saw his family flee civil unrest in Peru when he was 11 and has a big part to play in why he has always remained so grounded. It’s also a background that fuels his passion for sustainability, the circular economy and social enterprise something we discuss further in our chat.

So if you want to know what it takes to reach the top in a variety of competitive industries while sticking to your principles, you won’t want to miss Martin’s advice in this episode.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do get in touch at james@jbmc.co.uk

If you want to find out more about Martin, check out his LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinmoraleslondon

If you want to find out more about Cerviche, have a look at their website – https://www.cevichefamily.com/

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