It’s only taken me 12 years to know about it, but I’ve just recently watched the Ricky Gervais film Cemetery Junction. Unless you’re averse to his rather generous use of profanities, I’d recommend it. The theme of the film revolves around an old Arab proverb: “Throw your heart out in front of you and run ahead to catch it”.  Although it was probably never intended to have this consequence, it’s a great mantra for people to follow if they’re bored of the job they’re in and wish they had their own business but don’t want to risk the certainty that comes with a regular pay cheque.

Going one step further and seeking to set up a business that does more than set out to make a profit sends alarm signals to out-of-touch investors. I’ve seen many people with business plans to do their bit to save the world thwarted in their ability to get funded but largely, they keep going in their endeavour until they eventually do, often at great personal sacrifice. And when they do get backed, they tend to admit that if they’d got their money earlier, they wouldn’t have had the time to iron out the flaws in their original proposition.

On my regular visits to the great Fallow restaurant, I have yet to be drawn to order the cod’s head, but they tell me it’s by far and away their most popular dish and the chefs, having tested out their plans in an earlier pop-up site, really have their fingers on the pulse of how people are increasingly thinking these days. I was telling someone recently that I can’t imagine anyone wakes up thinking “I could really murder a cod’s head right now” but large swathes of their following order it knowing what would happen to it otherwise – it would likely end up in a bin or at best in a stock.

Instead, it becomes a meal that I guess makes one feel good by adapting “nose to tail” eating to fish rather than just meat. The fact that it comes smothered siracha sauce will come as a bonus draw and will tip me over in to having it next time I go.

If you were told that a restaurant would open in the fancy St James’s area with a cod’s head on the menu, conventional wisdom would justify you thinking either “what else have they got that might make me want to go there” or “I bet that doesn’t stay on for long”.

But what they’ve achieved is something I have regular differences of opinion with industry friends on when I say that that increasingly people are looking for businesses whose values – what they hold dear – are aligned with their own. The regular retort to that is that’s wishful thinking, falsely assuming the millennials this is aimed at actually have any money to spend. They in fact do because they don’t do what I did in my 20s and buy a flat and buy a car. It was us back then that this was true of.

Likewise, The Conduit Club was expected by many to fail because sceptics thought the heart it threw would never find enough people to run after it. Although it did have an early tumble, it’s honed its proposition and is back with great gusto.

So, if you ever decide to throw your heart, be sure to engage your head to ensure that you can catch it.