could you do me a quick favor if you're

listening to this please hit the follow

or subscribe button it helps more than

you know and we invite subscribers in

every month to watch the show in person

i grew from nothing to 12 000 employees

2.4 billion turnover john caldwell the

billionaire founder of phones for you as

it relates to his wealth

he has it all but it's come

at a real cost i was sitting on the edge

of my seat nearly every day for 20 years

facing threat after threat after threat

after threat it did nearly finish me i

think anybody's would you know because

you can't work 22 hours a day under

immense pressure it's a monster deal the

biggest ever been done in the

marketplace by anybody you know i don't

mind fair competition but it was very

unethical

if i didn't find a solution it was

instantly terminal you know my turnover

was going to drop immediately my stores

were empty

nothing i'd have been bankrupt and i

wouldn't be here talking to you today

without further ado i'm stephen bartlett

and this is the diver ceo i hope

nobody's listening but if you are then

please keep this to yourself

[Music]

i suppose if i'd had a little bit more

love i would have been happier

do you remember saying that

i don't actually but i can understand

why i might have said it why do you

think you might have said that um

it's yeah it would certainly be to do

with my childhood

um because my

father was uh

not the kindest to me uh not abusive but

not in a way well in a way maybe he was

abusive but not abusive in the way

normal sense of it he just wasn't very

fair with me and certainly not very

affectionate and i think my mother was

struggling through all those early

childhood years

so i understand completely why i might

say

if i'd had a bit more love i might have

been happier uh so it's quite a true

point

when you say your father wasn't so kind

to you

was that because he was

he was suffering with something or he

was

did you ever diagnose why he wasn't kind

to you not at the time but in more

recent years probably came to understand

it i think um

i think certainly one of the points was

that i was quite a rebellious child uh

we were brought up

in the back streets of stoke-on-trent in

the terraced houses and uh

you know it was football in the streets

and your mother coming down the road

shouting for you and i'd go hiding and

all my mates would say when when she

asked where i was oh we don't know we

haven't seen him and i'd behind me

behind somebody's front courtyard wall

so i was a nuisance and uh

you know i was difficult uh as a child

and uh very adventurous wanted

excitement all the time and that for

parents is very very difficult so i

think that was probably one of the

things but i think also he'd been

brought up with

certain

strange values really that didn't really

work very well he hadn't made a

transition to yet a different generation

so he put me on an old army and navy

shoes

from the army and navy store

uh which crippled me and so i was out in

the streets you know playing football

and so on and expected to keep these

shoes perfectly like you might be in the

army and when i came back with them

scuffed i was in serious trouble and i

couldn't stop them from being scuffed at

the same time my feet were crippled it

just got some strange values i mean i

suppose in today's age you would say

that was child abuse but um

um

it was just the way he was and and i

think when i've spoken to some of his

friends

um over the last 30 40 years

they think that he came back with ptsd

from the war and of course it was never

diagnosed in those days um

and he he came back and he got a lot of

wonderful qualities he would never see

anybody in trouble he was almost the

first day without it being paid for

because he was an engineer very capable

very ingenious and any car broken down

on the roadside where people were in

trouble he'd just stop and help them out

i'd be quite grateful for that on one

one count uh

uh i'd have to wait in the car for an

hour while he fixed the car but i knew

a you know a couple of shillings or half

a crown was going to come my way as a

result

so you know it was a sort of this this

childhood of uh where i'd got a lot of

respect for my father in some ways but

in other ways the way he treated me was

very unfair

and uh and

not in a kind way on many occasions

and um

i realized that you you lost your mother

recently so i wanted to first say i'm

sorry for your loss and i know that um

it can't be easy coming and doing this

so soon after so i also want to thank

you for you know coming and doing this

because i know that

well i can't imagine you know the

difficulty of all of that um

i when i was doing the research on your

story i was reading about your

relationship with her and your father

um

and and that dynamic and there was a lot

of

things within your relationship that

really resonated with me um so i wanted

to ask about that relationship and those

dynamics because i know that's really

really really formative in your story

as well so what was the relationship

like with your mother and your father

and you as a three

um well in the early days we lived with

my grandmother my grandmother didn't

like my mother

um i think she was a very jealous person

she adored me so my relationship with my

grandmother was amazing

she you know she would do anything for

me but at the same time she treated my

mother very very badly

um and there was lots of rows in the

household so it was not a happy place to

be really it was

a place full of um for me fears and

almost at time no terrors is too strong

a word but certainly fears

and insecurities because i never really

knew whether my mother and father were

going to survive the experience

so it was it was very very tough days

and very formative days

um but

you know and you can look back and say i

wish you'd been different

and you and your listeners might expect

that i would say that but i absolutely

don't i would never have changed it

because it taught me a lot

and failure or difficulties teach you a

lot more than success because if you're

analytical and you look at what went

wrong or what the situation was

you can learn so much from it

and what i learned from my father

was that

i would never ever be unfair

to another human being if i could

possibly avoid it especially to my

children and i also learned to make sure

that all the people in my life that mata

felt extremely loved by me

and i told them that on a daily basis

because they can come a point when it's

too late

when you come to understand

in hindsight why your father might have

been the way he was

um or when i sit here with their guests

and they kind of they talk about their

parents a lot of the time you see these

kind of generational cycles where their

parents treated them in a certain way so

they kind of inherited those values or

that way of behaving and then they've

kind of they've treated

their children in the same way

i

sometimes worry especially as i've got a

little bit older

i see certain patterns in my behavior

that i

didn't love from my parents

um

small things it might be my temper

sometimes or it might be you know other

other things do you ever when you've

gone through an experience like that in

a home where there it was a little bit

heated and you as you said your father

had a little bit of a temper do you ever

worry or catch glimpses of um

your childhood reoccurring today and

think i need to not

i need to not pass that on i need to not

repeat that cycle

it's a very good question um

i'm a long long way off perfect so i do

recognize characteristics of myself very

regularly that i don't admire

but

i've learned a huge amount from my

parents mistakes and

in many respects um

gone to do the opposite

and

by and large i do achieve the opposite

i do have my father's temper

i do have characteristics of my father

but

by and large i'm very comfortable with

who i am because

i do a huge amount of positive things in

life for everybody in my life and

it's it's actually the biggest sense of

satisfaction to me so yes i make lots of

mistakes

i made one yesterday you know i was

irritated with my partner because she

interrupted a meeting and then got a bit

off with me because i couldn't take the

call

and i got angry with her you know and

then i rang up later and said that you

were wrong to take that attitude with me

but

uh but uh you know let's just forget it

now

yeah we all we all

make mistakes i think i think if you've

got

spirit and character and drive and

passion you're always going to be uh

full of human failings and the the trick

is to minimize those human failings and

to maximize

what a human being should be

with acts of kindness and

and uh looking after people and and i

what i taught my children was there was

two things that were very very important

in their lives or important to me for

what they became

and it wasn't success not in the normal

measures of success it was just two

things be happy

and leave the world a better place than

you found it

and if you can do that i as a father i'm

going to be just the happiest man alive

and and your happiness might mean that

you have to be successful it might mean

they have to be a hugely successful

business person or whatever but that

doesn't matter to me what matters is

that you're happy and leave the world a

better place

as you've gone on that um journey of

like self-awareness and understanding

who you are and striving to be better in

various areas um was there something

that helped your journey to

self-awareness um

more than more than anything else what

was it was it feedback from others is it

journaling what allowed you to kind of

look yourself

in the mirror or from a bird's-eye view

and say

this is not good and i want to improve

on that thing

do you know i think there's been no

epiphany i think the epiphany was when i

was young learning that lesson about

fairness that fairness is crucial and

and i think it's the number one quality

people need i mean there's lots of other

important ones ones like loyalty and

faithfulness and so on and so forth

and morality there's a huge amount of

important qualities but i think it

starts with fairness

and that that that was

sort of traumatically imposed upon my

psyche as a youngster after that it was

all developmental recognizing the

mistakes i was making one after another

feedback from and understanding those

mistakes understanding that what i'd

done might have been hurtful or damaging

to another human being realizing that i

didn't want to be that person that

caused difficulty

um

you know and running the business it was

a very very very tough environment i

grew from nothing to

12 000 employees from zero

to uh 2.4 billion turnover

and uh

and i was a hard taskmaster and i've

never regretted that but at times

my hardness turned into unfairness and

that i was upset by

and i'd usually recognize it afterwards

maybe not always maybe there's a people

out there that say oh no you were you're

a terrible boss a lot of people say i

was a great boss but i'm sure there's

going to be people out there that were

um

damaged in some way by me being too

harsh

and possibly unfair at times but it was

always something i was striving to avoid

but i am only human you know

we all as humans make mistakes

especially when you're growing an empire

at the speed that i was growing it in

one of the toughest and most aggressive

environments there's ever been

so do because i can i can relate to that

sometimes i feel like i'm a little bit

hard and it's usually after the fact

when i

leave the situation or spend some time

alone or i go to the gym at night and i

think you know i i think i should handle

that situation with with maybe a little

bit more empathy

or my reaction probably didn't get the

best out of the people in that situation

was it those reflective moments on your

own where you look back on it or was it

years later

you know i think almost immediately

afterwards really if if i was angry

about something um

i've always been one to level out very

quickly no matter how angry and

frustrated i am

five minutes later i can be calm

and reflective

and maybe regret my actions

so i'm very very quick to be

self-admonishing

and

and then sometimes i'd say well i think

to myself well

you know i didn't behave correctly there

but the end result's still the right

result so i can't really do anything to

put it right because it just has to be

that way

but i'd still be self-critical i mean

you know i think i think criticism

especially self-criticism is one of the

most powerful things in life you know

every aspect of my business

i was criticizing all the time

looking for better ways of doing it

looking for how we could be bigger

better higher quality how we could

capture more market share

and for that you've got to be different

you've got to do things differently i

very much believe that don't do anything

the way anybody else does it you know

always

be contentious not necessarily

contentious in the way you

approach people but contentious in the

way you approach situations

and systems or methodologies

so i i

one of my absolute edicts in life was

try and do something very different to

everybody else now

we've all seen the chief executives

who've come into a business and they

need to do something different than the

predecessor and they make change for

changes sake and that's destructive

so when i say something do something

different it has to be different but so

intelligently different that what you do

is make a quantum leap forward

so one of my rules for every employee i

used to say

never never change it's the destruction

of business

but i'd immediately follow on by saying

but if you don't change

you will fail

now that's a mixed message i know but

then i would explain it and say look if

the change is going to make a massive

quantum leap forward

make the change if you're uncertain

about it

it's not worth the risk because the

change will be detrimental because

you've got to retrain all of those

people and what's the point of making

small changes for the sake of them don't

do it because you think you've got to

achieve something do it because it's

going to make a big difference to the

business model

and i could get that message through to

some people but it is a difficult one to

understand and and of course also

judgment comes into it because you've

got a impeccable judgment to try and see

through what the end result might be

um to

whatever you're trying to change

and that drive that you're talking about

to be bigger and to be better and to

change as you reflect um because in the

moment

i am i'm imagining that especially when

you're younger in business and i mean

you started you know the car dealership

and you were selling toys and books the

drive you had at that moment

i i imagine it's almost a little bit

subconscious you just wake up in the

morning and you just want to change your

life and you just feel driven but as you

reflect on your life and that drive and

hunger you had

does it feel to you like it was probably

in fact insecurity

life's complicated isn't it when you

analyze yourself it's a complicated mix

of lots of component parts but i think

first of all i was born to be an

entrepreneur

stroke salesman i was born to be that

there is no doubt about that whatsoever

and and these early attributes showed

themselves when i was four or five

but i do think uh to your point of

insecurity

the

having that insecurity does drive you

on a lot further you know i hate failure

and love success

and do is that born out of insecurity

well i think to a point but it's also

borne out of pride you know it's the

pride of wanting to succeed the pride of

wanting to change things for the better

whether it's my charitable

interests or whether it's business i

feel the same about everything in life

in fact

people find me very difficult to live

with because my attention to detail is

immense

and i pick up on the tiniest things one

of my one of my directors once said to

me in in frustration i might add it

wasn't complimentary

he uh because i'd picked up on something

he said you know he said i could build

you the best house in the world

and one of the tiles might be missing on

off the roof and that's all you'd focus

on

and we can all focus on our successes

but it's not our successes that make us

successful it's their failures and what

we get wrong and putting them right but

that's sometimes very difficult for the

recipient to live with it's not

difficult for me to live with for my

failures because i take it on the chin

and i put it right and move on

but for the recipients that might be

being criticized at the time as much as

i might do it try and do it in a

constructive way it's still a criticism

and uh and i think that can be very

difficult for people when i pick up on

every last detail where they've not

actually got it quite right i was just

saying to my manager yesterday i i was

saying i think

the balance that i need to be better at

striking is i spend too much time

focused on

possible improvements and not at enough

time celebrating

current progress

so i'm always trying to find you know

how we can be better and dwelling on

that as opposed to dwelling on the

progress that's been made and sometimes

i think for some people that can make it

feel like you're not giving them enough

recognition or you're not praising as

much as you're criticizing right

have you found that there needs to be a

healthy balance between the two or is

that okay i've always been criticized

for not praising people enough right

always being criticized for that

um but

what i know in life

is that if you're in a very very

aggressive competitive environment

where you need every last ounce out of a

person

you do need to give them incentives and

motivation and they do need to feel good

about themselves to an extent

but if they feel too good about

themselves

then their ego goes up and ego is always

a source of destruction ego is never a

good thing and it's this balance between

making them feel valued

but not letting their ego get out of

check

and this was a huge problem for me in

the mobile phone world because

because we were the leaders in the uk

and i was reputed to be a hard task

master and drive people to achieve the

very best

all of my people were poached

by the competitors they all wanted them

you know so i had this really difficult

balance to drive between not giving them

too much feeling of self-worth because

that would make them more likely to

accept a job somewhere else i mean this

sounds a bit negative but it was reality

it would give them too much for feeling

self-worth and make them too likely to

jump ship but then the contra to that

was making them feel part of an enormous

winning organization that they could

never get that satisfaction anywhere

else and putting wealth creation schemes

in that rewarded them for long-term

loyalty and long-term performance

and i did lots and lots of innovative

schemes like that to make people feel

valued i'd run competitions i'd do all

sorts of things but one of the smartest

things i probably did

i've never told anybody this before

really i mean my employees know it so

they come to me like every managing

director does with the budget and this

is the business plan for next year and

what do they always do they always try

and sell you on the lowest achievement

possible because a that makes them look

a success when they bust when they bust

the

numbers and b they get the full bonus

so

one of my classic styles would be to say

i was not really ambitious enough for me

i said but

if

that's all you think you can achieve

and you're lacking the ambition to do

any better

then fine i'll accept it but you

certainly won't be getting a pay rise on

your basic

now these guys might be on 250k basic

and 250k bonus say so the bonus was

really important to them but so was the

basic

you know and so i played

basic

versus bonus

and versus ambition

so they knew if they came back came in

and tried to blag me with low numbers so

they got the full bonus they wouldn't

get a basic pay rise so the basic pay

rise was linked to their uh to their

ambition

but it's a really difficult thing in

a market as volatile as the mobile phone

business was because it was colossally

colossally volatile and it was really

difficult if you if you made five

million pounds this year on one

particular business it was very

difficult to say with that we can

achieve this growth and we can get to

six million next year because there'd be

things coming at you from left base that

could decimate your business

one of my businesses and mobile phone

distribution i had 20 businesses within

mobile phones

the distribution business which we were

selling handsets all throughout the uk

and just the handsets

motorola dropped the price on me

overnight

having delivered a huge amount of stock

into my warehouse and dropped the price

overnight in the marketplace by 50

pounds

it wrote off 15 million pounds off my p

l

when i'd only expected to make six

so there was all of those issues all the

time i mean it was really a fight to the

bitter end here to grow my business so

it was a very very tough environment

i really want to go on to the to that

which is how tough it was scaling that

business to you know

the tremendous valuation it reached and

the exit you had um i was just thinking

then as you were speaking

um you know you were talking then about

kind of your your ability to understand

people and get the best out of them

which was so evident there

and it made me ask myself the question

in my head like what were the skills you

had in business that you were really

good at and the skills you had in

business where you weren't good at like

i can look at myself and say okay i'm

like you very uniquely good at this

stuff but i know i'm terrible at x y and

z and i ask that question in part

because entrepreneurs sometimes fall

into the trap of believing that they

need to be good at everything to succeed

but when you look at the greats like sir

you know richard branson

and so on

i'm not actually good at that many

things according to a lot of people but

very very good at what he was good at so

what was your sort of um well i think

first of all

one of my unique points was opposite of

what you just said it was that i was

good at everything but not great at

everything right so i was good at

everything i was usually the best at any

one of the areas of my employees

and what my goal was always was to have

somebody in a discipline that was not

better than me that i could admire it

was difficult to find but of course i

did find those people i had to do

because i wasn't good enough at all of

those disciplines to grow the business

to where i did so i had to find those

people but initially the

the the reason for success was that i

was good at everything

but everything but i wasn't great at

everything now if you then look at when

i then later on as the business group

identified my weaknesses and strengths

my commercial intellect was the real

the real

massive attribute

along with resilience if you look at my

six critical success fit factors

ambition drive resilience passion

commercial intellect and leadership

of all of those

um commercial intellect was probably the

number one quality but with

huge resilience

and uh and it's that resilience that

enabled me to fight when everything was

collapsing around me and to still fight

through the depths of despair and just

keep going and my health mental health

and physical health to hold up and to

keep going

so it was definitely though those two if

you look at my weaknesses i managed to

plug those because whilst i was a great

innovator and i'd say right that's what

we're going to do now go away and do it

i was dreadful at following up and i

would never

follow up properly but i plugged that by

by having somebody that was really in to

the follow-up detail so he would hold

the people to account he was my

right-hand man

he would hold the people to account

where i'd set the task and the challenge

and maybe innovated a whole new way of

doing something he would then follow up

and make sure that they did

i was very poor at that for whatever

reason i don't know i think i was just

on to the next brainwave you know and on

to the next creation

whilst i've got an amazing attention to

detail spontaneous detail i'm not very

good at just going back week in week out

to

look at something and check it's being

done properly so i did need somebody to

do that for me

quick one for many years people have

been asking for a coffee flavoured heel

and quite recently he'll release the

iced coffee caramel flavor of their

ready to drink heels and i've just

become hooked on it over the last couple

of weeks i've been on a really

interesting journey with huel which i've

described and talked about a little bit

on this podcast i started with the berry

ready to drink then i moved over to the

protein salted caramel because it's 100

calories and it gives you all of your

essential vitamins and minerals but also

gives you the 20 odd grams of protein

you need and now i'm balanced between

them both i drink mostly the banana

flavor ready to drink i've got really

into the iced coffee caramel flavor of

heels ready to drink and now i'm

drinking that as well as the protein

make sure you try the new ready to drink

flavors that the caramel flavor is

amazing the new banana flavor as well is

amazing and obviously as i said the iced

coffee caramel flavor has been a real

smash hit so check it out let me know

what you think on social media i see all

of your tags and instagram posts and

tweets about you back to the podcast

one of the things you described earlier

is um one of your sort of strength

factors or success factors was this this

word resilience

now as you look at your life

before we go into the the key moments

where it was important for you to be

resilient and all of the turmoil you

went through across your business career

where did that resilience come from in

you and where do you think it comes from

in people generally because i know

there's an argument to say you know i

was born with it but for me when i look

at your story i think you know

it was like you know you went through a

bit of a tumultuous um childhood and

there was a lot of stress put on you

which you learned how to deal with which

you know

having sat here with a lot of people and

people that had a certain resilience to

them it tends to be the case that

they've been through quite a tough

moulding to build that is that accurate

um well i absolutely think i was born

with it it's a characteristic that

you're born with um

you're born with a

you can see all around the world you're

born with a degree of physical

resilience and mental resilience and no

matter how much you train somebody

you're not going to put the level of

resilience in that somebody might need

whether the

upbringing adds to that resilience or

detract so i wouldn't really know and

some people it will detract there's an

old expression isn't there what doesn't

kill you makes you stronger clearly it's

not true you know but in some cases it

is now in my case i would say i was born

with that resilience and that's a real

look of birth you know if you've got

these characteristics that are positive

that that's just pure luck of birth

but then you can do with them what you

wish and of course the external

environment or in this case my

upbringing probably added to that

resilience and uh strengthened me even

more but another person it might have

weakened and left them scarred so it's a

it's a tricky one really but um

but

i i would never

want to see anybody have

the challenges that i had and hope that

they would survive because they might

not

you know and

i wouldn't want to gamble

that that would make them stronger

because it might not make them stronger

and in a lot of cases i know it wouldn't

you know i've seen it amongst my 12 000

employees i always remember the day when

one of my guys who was under

immense pressure

um rang me up from the car sobbing

it was about seven o'clock in the

morning said i can't come in today

um and i won't mention his name because

he might be embarrassed by it but i said

what

where what's happened where are you he

said

i don't know he said i'm in the car

halfway to work and i just can't

can't move can't drive can't do anything

i just can't come in

and i instantly thought god you know

something very serious is going wrong

here so i said i said to look just sit

in the car where are you just send me a

send me give me your address and i'll

come to you and i went to him and it was

clear that he was having a bit of a

nervous breakdown

now

that didn't make him stronger

well fortunately i gave him about two or

three months off work and he did recover

and when he came back to work i took a

load of responsibilities off him put

those into other areas and let him have

an easy entry back into his role and he

did become a very valuable employee

again

and uh it was one of my success stories

under multiple level uh a success story

you've rescued somebody

but um

but

those sorts of pressures i was under

every day and i never cracked now why

was it because of my upbringing you know

was i just gifted at birth

and i think it's this birthright that

you know you just so lucky if you're

born with those qualities

and then you can try and make them the

best that you can do after that

i i resonate with what you've said there

in terms of i i

and i think the science is also supports

the idea that many people are

predisposed with a certain level of

resilience and the way they process

information is a little bit more

um

protects them a little bit more from the

external world um

i think one of the flaws in that when

you're one of those people tends to be

that it becomes harder to empathize with

those that are um suffering and i've i

struggled with that because because i do

feel like you know i went through fairly

stressful my company went public and i

grew up from my bedroom when i was 20

years old um and i struggled for a while

with understanding why people didn't

think the way that i thought and

couldn't deal with the things that i

could deal with

and that was a and i came to maybe an

understanding at 23 that was a real risk

if i couldn't emphasize with the fact

that people's brains weren't the same as

mine and they didn't have the same level

of driving you know do you relate to

that oh absolutely i'm still struggling

with it now yeah

i'm pragmatic about it because you know

the way i look at that

and i did learn that in my 30s i guess

but

didn't really ever accept it i couldn't

understand why somebody bright who had

been to oxbridge didn't get it

and there's me you know giving up

a-levels abandoned you know and

not caught considering myself to be an

intellectual at all could see it crystal

clear and why couldn't this person see

it and you're right it does cause a lot

lack of empathy a lack of thrust

and increases frustration

but pragmatically

it it had to be that way because if

everybody could see it the way i'd see

it i'd just be one of the crowd i would

never have had the success that i had so

the qualities that i was born with and

that helped me to succeed if everybody

was the same well i'd just be one of

seven billion people on the same path

you know so you then look at it in a

different way that uh you just feel very

lucky that you've got those qualities

and rather than criticizing other people

that haven't got them

try and look at it that you're very

lucky to have them

and to look after those people and get

the best out of them that you can in

their particular area and try and limit

the i guess trying to limit the

downsides of having those qualities

because for me like the obsessiveness

the drive the lack of empathy for why

people couldn't see the world and this

didn't see the world the same way i saw

it not saying that i saw it in a better

way because as i say there's lots of

costs to seeing the world in a certain

in any way no matter how you see the

world as a cost

whether that's you become

incredibly lonely

or you you know abandon romantic

relationships whatever um on that point

of resilience then

can you take me to the first time in

your business professional career where

you genuinely

the first hard moment the first moment

where you thought this is it

gosh i mean i've had thousands but

and they were all a different level of

crisis

i'll deal with the first that

that really worried me um

i i i was a

michelin tyre company engineer was a

foreman um

in the

tie making department on the engineering

side

and uh during that time i started

selling cars and i sold them to all my

michelin people

um but i was trading from home

and the neighbors complained because

they saw all these cars coming and going

i kept it as discreet as i could of

course but they saw them and they

complained and the planners came down

and

told me i'd got to to cease

so suddenly i panicked because this is

this was the start of what i saw of my

future to try and create some wealth and

some

success and so

i panicked into this uh car sales site

and opened up this car sales site but i

hadn't really got enough money to stock

it properly so i went to my mother

and i said could we mortgage your house

mom

and that'll allow us to buy

um

another 20 cars i think it was from the

from the mortgage that would uh we'd be

able to get

and uh

don't worry about it because i will

never ever fail you you'll never lose

your house and furthermore when i make

money i'll relocate you to where you

want to be on the side of the mallvan

hills by your lovely house there and so

you'll do well i'll tell you she didn't

even hesitate

which is remarkable really because

you know i've got no real proper success

um history there for her to judge from

um she just did desire to love and uh

did it instantly so coming to the answer

of the question of the trauma

all went well during the summer

but

as november came sales dropped off a

cliff

and we started losing money hand over

fist because there was just no sales it

was a very very grim november

uh and december and all the cars were

frozen up you know it was one of those

winters that were just horrendous back

almost before you were probably was

before you were born actually

so 92. no it was before then it was

about 80

1982 perhaps um

but but they dropped off a cliff

now we weren't in financial difficulty

but

the trajectory

would have put us on it and

i started really really really panicking

and there was not much i could do about

it because every time i went to a car

you couldn't even open the door it was

frozen solid the batteries were always

flat

there was no customers anyway

we couldn't clear the frost off or with

the great difficulty if you hosed it

down with water the water would freeze i

mean it was a nightmare a complete

nightmare and i started having visions

of letting my mother down and failing

her in a bad way

and uh it really drove me uh at the time

i was still working at mitchell entire

company i was doing 50 hours a week

there

i was doing probably

70 or 80 hours a week at the car sales

site as well and going out and doing all

the buying

i remember for a period of six months

i worked 22 hours a day one week and

three because i was on night shift at

michelin that week and on that night

shift i'd get home at 7 00 a.m

i'd have two hours with my well one and

a half two hours with my wife uh enough

i'd be going to the auctions buying cars

during the day running the car sales

site at night until i went to work it's

11 o'clock on the

night shift again and i did that one

week and three for about six months it

didn't nearly finish me i was on

tranquilizers because it was i was

wretching and i was so

uh disturbed you know i was in a real

mess but i was able to function when you

say tranquilizers you mean like

anti-anxiety yes i think there were

if i remember rightly i think they were

librium

just a car a acidity that the doctor had

given me i wasn't feeling anxious

um my nervous system was just shot

i just got so much stress and pressure

to save my mother's house even though it

wasn't under immediate threat but i've

always done that i've always seen the

threat a long way in advance which is

what keeps you safe because then you

react but it didn't keep me safe

physically because you know it put me

under enormous pressure to try and make

certain that day never came have you

seen throughout your career how your

body ends up holding the score there's

the book written about how our body even

if our mind hasn't acknowledged the

threat um hasn't acknowledged the fear

consciously our body will quickly tell

us through

symptoms like the one you've described

there that we are under threat because i

noticed in my business whenever we had

payroll issues or whenever cash got

tight

i would get sick

like i would the only time in the seven

years that i ran the business where i

would get a cold or a flu

was like 48 hours

um around the time that i'd found out

that we had a cash issue

and although i thought i was this like

tough guy that who could just he was

dealing with everything clearly my body

had its own

you know

mind

yeah

i've sort of been quite lucky mostly

because that's the only time i can

remember my body

rebellion but i think anybody's would

you know because you can't work 22 hours

a day under immense pressure you just

cannot do it i get an hour and a half

sleep

you know and doing that for seven nights

seven days you just you just i don't

think anybody could probably do it and

it's probably the only time that my

system started to fail but then with the

odd tranquilizer i was able to keep

going you know so

uh it calm you know calmness whatever

with this wretching was it calmed it

down i was okay and then i had no other

symptoms and this is just pure look of

life you know it's just the look of life

that uh

nothing's been able to cave me in

and uh

you know there was a i was thinking when

i answered that question do i tell you

about my mother well i told you that

because it's very topical for me at the

moment having lost my mother and feeling

very emotional about that but uh but

that was a very emotional occasion to

make certain that i

that i didn't let it out but

uh in the early years of uh cellular

we had probably 90 percent of our

business was through motorola motorola

were world leaders by a long way

and uh

the the other 10 was a bit here and a

bit there the odd panasonic the odd

nokia but really almost inconsequential

because motorola had the entire market

share

and the relationship with motorola was

always very tenuous because although we

we came to sell vast volumes it was a

bit of a

well they they always referred it as the

tail wagging the dog you know when the

tail wags the dog they don't like it so

when they're encouraging you to do huge

volumes for them that's wonderful as you

gain volume you're getting power as you

gain power they feel vulnerable and as

they feel vulnerable they want to cut

your power i mean this was with every

manufacturer with everything in my life

i grew these people and then they wanted

to chop me down because i grew too

powerful and they didn't like that

situation

anyway this uh motorola had been

threatening me for

a couple of years it was very weird

because on the one hand they they would

encourage me to do something then they

might get a plate because i'd exported

to china perfectly legitimately but

exported to china they didn't like that

so then they get a complaint from the

chinese you know the people that were in

those territories

the english guys were very happy because

i'd done the volume

the chinese guys were

complaining to head office the complaint

came back to the uk and the uk

they're not to come and say well you

mustn't do that again

but then

they'd still

encourage me to take big volumes which

they knew i couldn't do without

exporting around the world

so it was this very tenuous relationship

anyway eventually a new manager took

over and he came to see me took me out

to lunch which was a very rare occasion

but we went out to lunch and stoked on

trent and

we talked about the business model and

so on and he said

you know

we don't really like this distribution

model of yours

and

we really

hate the fact that you're undercutting

hate the fact that you're competitive

and it's doing us a lot of damage around

the world

and in the uk

and if anybody was going to do that i'd

be doing it

i

naively at the time took that to mean

motorola wanted to take my distribution

off me

a month later he terminated my

distribution agreement don't forget this

is 90

of my business by then i got 60 or 70

employees huge overheads

and motorola was 90 percent of my

business

he terminated my agreement

and one month later resigned from

motorola

and set up his own distribution business

on the south coast of england

with motorola as his supplier

so he went from general manager to my

competitor by having stripped me

of all of my turnover

how would you deal with that

you tell me

well the way i dealt with it

was

every every challenge in life whether

it's business personal or anything is

just that it's a challenge and there's

always a solution and you've just got to

put your intellect towards what the

solution is

um well so what was the solution here

well i just looked at the marketplace

and there was lots of service providers

who are the people that sold the air

time on behalf of vodafone cellnet and

so on and these service providers were

were distributing motorola of course

because that was 90 of their business

and they were getting discounts

according to the volume they took

so i went and had confident confidential

conversations with a couple of them and

said look why don't i buy from you

and what i can do is i can add my

massive volume onto your volume and

you'll get a huge retrospective discount

a much better buying price we'll have to

keep it secret from motorola because

otherwise they might cut your supply off

but we'll just do it very very

secretively you supply me and i can go

to the market and continue doing what

i'm doing

and i managed to get two suppliers who

bought into that

and supplied me with a kit cheaper than

i'd been buying it before because

motorola had always manipulated me and

given me a price that was far worse than

i should have had for the volume that i

was doing

so i managed to keep going immediately

on that but that wasn't the answer

because i didn't want to help motorola

so another uh another situation occurred

where i asked nokia to come in to see me

they were they were actually quite

reticent to do so um the guy chris jones

who was their sales director eventually

did come and see me we got on like a

house on fire in spite of his reputation

for being a real you know a bit of a

hard nut uh we did just get on very very

well nokia had only got one percent

market share and i said to chris look

we can build this business you'll have

my heart and soul and passion because i

want to kill motorola i want to destroy

them in the same way that they've tried

to destroy me

and we did a deal with one of their

old stock items that they'd failed with

completely and i bought 3000 units which

doesn't sound much now i mean i bought

that every second almost in the later

days of cordwell but uh

at that time it's a monster deal the

biggest ever been done in the

marketplace by anybody and i bought

these 3 000 units at a phenomenally low

price and i was able to put nokia on the

face of the map with these units and

that wouldn't have saved the day for me

had it not been for a bit of a stroke of

luck as well which which was the

nokia decided to get aggressive they

decided that they didn't want to be a

nobody at the mobile phone business

they'd got a new phone coming out the

101 and they really wanted to capture

market share that's music to my ears

because it was a lovely little phone it

was once again before your time really

but but it was a a lot of listeners will

remember especially the older ones

because it was a really famous phone in

its day

and i managed to do a deal with nokia

for huge quantities a phenomenally

advantageous price

and the my goal was to take motorola's

market share off them

to the nth degree not just as a vendetta

but because that was good for my

business and i was really really upset

with motorola because they tried to kill

me you know

and if i hadn't been able to find

solutions i would have i would have been

bankrupt i wouldn't have survived so

we got this nokia 101

and we absolutely blasted it out through

our retail premises through our airtime

retailer services and through just pure

wholesale

and we built nokia up to 20 market share

in a year wow and commensurate at the

same time motorola's market share

started dropping

they were world leader until iphone and

apple came out

so

we helped motor we helped nokia get to

worldly well we could help them to get

to uk leader

and helped motorola's massive decline

and um

listeners might think oh that's you know

a bit

bit harsh but it was not harsh because

you know what what do you do if somebody

wants to destroy you like that in an

unethical way as well you know i don't

mind fair competition but it was very

unethical they'd help me build up to

what i was i had helped build their

market share then it didn't suit them

but it was mostly on an unethical

general manager who just wanted to kill

my distribution and re remove my

distributorship so he could set up on

his own

on that day where you get that

email whatever it was i don't know i

didn't

really know how people were

communicating back then because i wasn't

alive but you get that message that um

motorola are terminating your contract

what is the

and you've got 70 employees you've got

this great business that's growing

quickly and it's probably you know

really taking you out of

um

it's giving you a new life potentially

right and you get that message that they

are terminating your contract on the day

when you read the message how does it

feel emotionally

take me through the range

utter despair

utter despair

um

on the one hand

and

fires up the lion in me on the other

and i have got a lion in me you know and

uh

my brother once wrote a poem about that

that i could be the kindest and best

friend but don't make me an enemy

i i but but just for clarity for your

list i don't i don't hold grudges

against anybody ever you know but if

somebody really really goes at me

um they'd better beware

and so it was a combination of these two

aspects sleepless nights nights oh

absolutely i don't have sleepless nights

but i did on that because

it was terminal if i didn't find a

solution it was instantly terminal you

know my turnover was going to drop

immediately my stores were empty

nothing

no future

and all those employees would have been

able to work i'd have been bankrupt and

i wouldn't be here talking to you today

i had to find a solution

and i did it with with ferocity

and passion

drive you know and i would not sweep a

moment until i found

enough solutions not just one solution

enough solutions that gave me insulation

and what i always say to people going

into business

follow my 10 rule about everything

never have more than 10 percent of your

supplies with any one supplier

never have 10 of your sales with any one

customer and never have 10 of the

responsibility with any one employee now

we can't all achieve that i certainly

couldn't achieve it and i've never been

able to achieve it since but it's a goal

to have in mind because that insulates

you from any catastrophe whatsoever

so you know if if people in business

have got any business that was similar

to mine where you're relying on

customers and suppliers and so on the 10

rule

um that i

sort of innovated as a consequence of my

uh experiences is an absolute golden

rule to try and emulate

i love that and the reason i i really

dwell on the point of like having those

moments of like existential terminal

risk is because on

i feel pretty much all entrepreneurs

especially if they they go on for long

enough we'll encounter a moment like

that and i did in my life many of them

and in hindsight you realize how your

response in those moments ends up being

really really defining and also i view

those moments as inevitable regardless

of what you do and thirdly

the risk is that entrepreneurs will

think

those moments are a

are evidence of their own inadequacy

and that this is a sign that they should

give up whereas you know having read

through your story you go through

moments of kind of like existential risk

and crisis over and over again

um and you know it was just the nature

of the business yeah you know it was

it was a horrible business it really was

a horrible business i mean i'm

it's created all my wealth yeah and

i'm very grateful to the business but it

was a horrible business that was

i was sitting on the edge of my seat

nearly every day for 20 years facing

threat after threat after threat after

threat there was never a day went by

there i didn't

face a fairly significant threat

um

not of the significance that i've just

talked about but there were just endless

threats

and you know it was really

really actually very tiring and not

enjoyable at all a lot of people that i

know have said oh this is so enjoyable

well not for me it wasn't i mean i

enjoyed the success and i enjoyed some

moments and some victories

but it was almost like um

i can't imagine really how a heroine had

it feels but uh i think i think i was a

heroin addict you know i'd get my shot

of heroin

and everything would be wonderful for an

hour or two and then the rest of it was

despair isn't that so bizarre that you

would choose that you would choose the

pain and chaos versus just you could

have gone and done something else john

you could have gone and just worked a

nice nine-to-five job and been

comfortable why are you choosing

struggle and pain

just

in my dna you know i i visualized when i

was seven or eight years old

um and it was an immensely strong vision

visualization

of

being in a chauffeur driven rolls royce

and a show for driven rolls-royce

because my father

admired them and said they were the best

koi in the world and only rich people

had them blah blah blah

so i'm in a chauffeur driven rolls royce

driving around the streets of shelton

which is the back streets of stokentran

and handing five-pound pound notes out

to poor people

that became

i don't know why but it became my

destiny

that that destiny sat over me like a

damocles sword you know you've got to

achieve that destiny else you've just

failed completely in life you have to do

it you have to do the wealth and then

you have to give that wealth away to

make people's lives better

so i didn't have any choice

i know it sounds bizarre but i had no

choice it's like now

a lot of my life is stressful on the

charity work but i don't have any choice

you know i give up and sacrifice lots of

personal things to do the things that

i'm doing from a charitable perspective

i mean don't get me wrong i have a great

lifestyle i don't want any sympathy on

that but i'm just saying i do and it's

my destiny and i can't give it up you

know people say well why did you do this

why did you why'd you miss out on things

that you could be doing why don't you

just take it easy why don't you earn

that i said well i've got no choice it's

just written into my dna i must do it

and uh

and so i do you know it's just who i am

i can't explain it really it's just who

i am

being dragged by that sense of

mission towards that north star of the

rolls royce giving out the five pound

notes or even now with all the

charitable work you do

you describe it as not being a choice

which kind of means that it's just like

you're being pulled in that direction

the cost again which i always like to

shine a light on as well as you've

described as you you said at the time

you didn't have any friends

throughout that period and you described

you know those 20 years as 20 years of

grief talk to me about the loneliness

point

i heard you say i think it was on desert

island discs your interview there that

you didn't have friends

no but i wasn't lonely i mean i had a

wonderful wife

um eventually went on to have uh

two children during that time or three

eventually

um

and i wasn't lonely at all um

i lived for the business and i'd got

some great relationships within the

business with people who

you know i was really close to craig

benny who was my finance director as

they want but monitored i felt with him

i felt like he was my brother but my

brother was in the business as well

so there were these close relationships

within the business not very many but

enough to to not feel lonely and then i

got my wife and children at home

so the loneliness never

never came to fruition i wouldn't ever

want to go back to that because i've now

got a huge number of friends and uh some

very special friends

and

and a lot of loving relationships

so i would never want to give that up

but actually the charity is part of that

because some of the children that we've

helped in cordwell children

are immensely successful in their own

right i was telling somebody only

yesterday that one of the children we

helped when she was three years old was

tilly

until he has type 2 muscular atrophy

which stops all the muscles working

she actually won

of her own

absolute brilliance and effort a

scholarship at stanford university

i mean it's unbelievable

now

i'm not responsible for that i helped

because we supplied her with a

wheelchair that she could not have

probably succeeded without it but her

and her parents and other support groups

around her we all as a team but her

mainly more than anybody

made this happen

and i visited her at stanford university

we went for a coffee together and uh

she's in a wheelchair the one that we

supplied you know with a little joystick

buzzing along the pavement i'm there on

my bike i'd cycle down from her son's

house and they're cycling along she's

in a wheelchair we get to starbucks i go

and buy her coffee

and she's got this starbucks coffee on a

tray in front of her wheelchair

and she's got a support mechanism on her

arm

that gives her gives a little bit extra

stiffness

and this coffee's quite a big coffee and

she lifts it up but i'm thinking

i didn't really know understand how she

was doing that which clearly didn't

understand his wheelchair worked and i

said

tilly i thought your arm was too weak to

lift a weight like that she said it is

i said well how are you doing that she

said oh i've got two foot pedals there

and one of them well the foot pedals

motorize right this this this bracket

that lifts her arm so she got power

assisted on

and she's drinking this coffee and i'm

thinking the the absolute trauma that

she's gone through in life and yet she's

done everything with grace with spirit

with enthusiasm even ending up at

stanford university

you know six thousand five thousand

miles from home

i mean it's amazing

and

joint like that

can never be replaced by anything i can

have all the boats in the world all the

helicopters all the trappings that i do

have which are lovely and wonderful

but without that they wouldn't mean much

to me and it's that sense of spiritual

satisfaction

from changing a person's life especially

a child's that you'll never get from

restaurant meals or boats or holidays

you just never get it yeah you enjoy it

and i take all my friends and i have a

lovely time really enjoy it but does it

really

go down into my heart

like

the 60 000 children we've helped and the

tillies of this world no can't even

begin to compete

quick one this is maybe a good segue to

talk about a little bit of an

announcement i have to make which is we

have a brand new sponsor for the podcast

and some of you if you've seen my social

media posts will know that i often wear

a lot of jewelry and the brand that i'm

wearing is a brand called crafted as you

can see on the table in front of me if

you're watching this on youtube crafted

are brands that sell really meaningful

affordable men's jewelry so i reached

out to the founders of crafted alex and

danny and asked them if they wanted to

sponsor the podcast and they said they

did they listen to the podcast they like

what we do here the podcast is a place

of meaning and their journey is all

about meaning and so we forged a new

partnership the piece of jewelry i wear

the most i want to introduce you to the

pieces and why i wear them is this sand

timer unsurprisingly and the thing for

me about sand timer is it's probably the

most clear reminder that our time here

on earth is finite so as the episodes go

on i'll introduce a piece of jewelry and

i'll tell you the meaning it has for me

and why i wear it

we get to the end of your story at

phones for you and um

and you've you've had this tremendous

you know exit which makes you a

billionaire

what was there a pivotal moment where

you did the penny drop for you that you

would your next sort of source of

meaning would be setting up coldwell

children and doing so much sort of

philanthropy and the pledge you made to

the melinda gates foundation to give

away your your worth and the initiatives

you've launched with the great british

entrepreneur was to support young people

into into their

their career paths was there a pivotal

moment where you decided that

this was now your new meaning there was

absolutely i mean everything that you've

described there was evolutionary but

there was an absolute pivotal point

because

during the the years of growing the

business and i've already tried to

describe the difficulties and challenges

i faced in that i was all consumed

and charity was the last thing on my

mind

but the destiny was still written in

stone somewhere in my dna it was just

buried by the

need to

maintain the success and keep the

success and not lose it and there were

so many threats that i had to be a 100

focus

one day the uh

uh

the nspcc came to me and said there's a

lord taverner's cricket i don't know why

i held this meeting but i did it was a

charity meeting and they said there's a

lord taverner's cricket match in stone

would you sponsor it

and they gave me the details and i

thought

well

it's not going to raise a lot of money

and

and somehow i evolved in that uh meeting

to taking over it and being largely

responsible for running it and making it

successful and it was celebrities that

were playing cricket against um other

celebrities you know and uh just a

fundraiser that was in the local cricket

room it didn't make a massive sum of

money but that was

the moment that that really got me

involved

but then the nspcc realizing i could be

a useful asset

got me and

got me to come down to a centre and have

a uh have a uh

an understanding of the work they did

which i didn't really understand

i knew it was to help children but i

didn't really understand

and when they showed me videos and

talked me through

it was young children sometimes as young

as three and four or five sexually

abused

often by a relative maybe the father

maybe the mother or an uncle or a friend

and they were sexually abused

and i'm looking at this in horror

but what was even more horrible if

anything could be

was that the child then couldn't do

anything about it because daddy would

say you don't want daddy to get in

trouble do you for showing his love

um daddy will go to jail and you don't

want that do you

so this

sexual abuse would just continue and

continue and continue

and the older the child would get the

more the child would think

this is horrible horrible and feel

guilty and dreadful about it

but the same threat that the father

would go to jail was sitting over them

i thought just how horrendous is that

how horrendous so i got really bought

into the nspcc then i immediately fired

into action

um ended up

as president of the north staffs branch

for a short period of time

what happened next was i mean that was

the pivotal moment really but what

happened next was

the nspcc is a fantastic charity but i

wasn't getting enough satisfaction out

of hands-on seen the difference i'd made

and i knew i could do a lot more

and so i decided to found my own charity

which was called all children

and with the objective of helping every

child in the uk that needed help

and the only qualifier wouldn't be

anything to do with what illness or what

the only qualifier is that the parents

couldn't get the help anywhere else

so any child with any illness

serious illness

we would be there to help and that's

what we've done and up to yet help 60

000 and still growing it enormously now

and to avoid the criticisms the nspcc

had which was that the overheads were

high and i'm not criticizing that

because i'd have to really understand

the nuts and bolts of everything um so

i'm certainly not

implying any criticism of that but they

were criticized for the overheads being

too high like a lot of charities are i

decided that uh the cordwell group would

pay every single running cost of the

charity so all the wages all the cars

all the telephones everything and not

only that but every single employee

would be involved in the charity in some

way either by donating themselves or by

fundraising to try and uh raise money

for these kids

that's what we did it's it's just deeply

tremendously inspiring and um

as i read through your story there's a

bit of a almost a cruel irony to the

fact that then your own child was in

need of the services that you were and

the support that you were giving to so

many other children

your son rufus got sick with lyme

disease yeah yeah it was a huge irony

really because all of my kids were very

very healthy and i felt hugely

privileged and even more privileged when

i got involved at the nspcc and saw

these tragic cases of abuse

and then when i set up cordwell

children's for all these children that

so desperately needed help and who'd

been born with nothing you know

in a traumatic situation

and uh i felt unbelievably lucky and

that look lasted for i suppose

six years

i think rufus fell ill

no seven or eight years and then rufus

fell ill with lyme disease and

panspandus

and uh we didn't know any of this at the

time because none of the doctors knew

anything about it

uh he just fell in with anxiety

i think with anxiety he collapsed on me

i was taking him back to school on a

sunday night he was at boarding school

which was all my children that went to

boarding school but as their request was

never something i wanted them to do

particularly but they wanted to do it so

rufus went to boarding school he was

home for an exia and on the sunday night

he said dad i don't want to go to school

well i'd had that with all my children

because as much as they wanted to go to

boarding school

after the weekend at home with the

family

you know they'd feel emotional about it

and wouldn't really want to leave the

family home

and i knew i had to be quite hard and

firm and cold about it you know and say

no of course you do rufus you know it's

always like this you get this

pain in the pit of your stomach that

you're leaving the family home and

you're going to school but it's fine you

know you'll be fine once we get in the

car we just go

i said no dad this is different

and i said what do you mean so don't be

silly

and i tried everything in my power to be

persuasive inspirational

hard

i tried every emotion to get him in that

car

almost to the point of physically

dragging him not that i did but i was

feeling like come on rufus please get in

the car you know you you know you'll be

fine once we get on the road because i

had it with my other children i knew

exactly what was going on or so i

thought

anyway i never did that didn't get him

to school

and i actually never got him to school

again

not properly

and the next day he's still in a

dreadful state it wasn't really anxiety

it's just they couldn't leave the home

well it must have been anxiety but i

couldn't explain it

and

we took him to a therapist the therapist

started doing all the you know the retro

retrograde looking at his life and blah

blah blah blah was there any traumatic

events and there wasn't and just going

through everything

nobody over the next few years could

find anything that was causing this

illness nothing

and eventually

and this was only about seven or eight

years ago after he'd been suffering