YouSaid · the spoken record

John Caudwell

lines on the record: 88
first: 2022-03-10
most recent: 2022-03-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And so I panicked into this 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, mum? And that'll allow us to buy another twenty cars, I think it was, from the mortgage that we'd be able to get. And don't worry about it because I'll 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 Mauvin Hills, by your lovely house there, and so you'll do well out of it. She didn't even hesitate, which is remarkable, really, because, you know, I'd got no real proper success history there for her to judge from. She just did it out of love and did it instantly.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're finished. I mean, I've had thousands and they were all at a different level of crisis. I'll deal with the first that... That really worried me. Michelin Tire Company engineer was a foreman in the tie-making department on the engineering side. And during that time I started selling cars and I sold them to all my Mitchling people. 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 cease. So suddenly I panicked because this was the start of what I saw of my future to try and create some wealth and some success”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, so you then look at it in a different way that you just feel very lucky that you've got those qualities. And rather than criticizing other people that haven't got them. 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, absolutely. I'm still struggling with it now I'm pragmatic about it because 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 giving up A-levels, abandoned, 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 lack of empathy, lack of an increases frustration. But pragmatically, 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 that helped me to succeed, if everybody was the same, well, I'd just be one of seven billion people on the same path.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 was one of my success stories on a multiple level there, success story that you've rescued somebody. But those sorts of pressures I was under every day and I never cracked. Now why? Was it because of my upbringing? Was I just gifted at birth? And I think it's this birthright that you're 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I won't mention his name because it might be embarrassed by it. I said, 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 move. I can't drive, can't do anything. I just can't come in. And I instantly thought something very serious is going wrong here. So I said to him, look, just sit in the car. Where are you? Just send 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 strengthen me even more. But another person it might have weakened and left them scored. So it's a tricky one really. But I would never want to see anybody have the challenges that I had and hope that they would survive because they might not. And I wouldn't want to gamble. That would make them stronger. 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 rang me up from the car sobbing. It was about 7 o'clock in the morning and said, I can't come in today.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I absolutely think I was born with it. It's a characteristic that you're born with. 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 detracts, 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. But in some cases it is. Now in my case, I would say I was born with that resilience and that's a real luck of birth. If you've got these characteristics that are positive.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 having somebody that was really into 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 have gone amazing attention to detail spontaneous detail, I'm not very good at just going back weekend, week out to look at something and check it's being done properly. So I did need somebody to do that for me.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything, but I wasn't great at everything. Now, if you then look at when I then later on as the business grew identified my weaknesses and strengths, my commercial intellect was the real massive attribute along with resilience. If you look at my six critical success factors, ambition drive resilience, passion, commercial intellect and leadership. Of all of those, commercial intellect was probably the number one quality, but with huge resilience. 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 those two. If you look at my weaknesses, I managed to plug those because”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was good at everything and I was usually the best at any one of the areas of my employees What my goal was always to have somebody in a discipline that was 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 reason for success was that I was good at everything.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think, first of all, One of my unique points was the complete opposite of what you just said. It was that I was good at everything. But not great at everything.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there was all of those issues all the time. I mean, it was really a fight to the bitter end to grow my business. So it was a very, very tough environment.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was colossally, colossally volatile, and it was really difficult if you made £5 million this year on a one particular business. It was very difficult to say we can achieve this growth and we can get to 6 million next year because there'd be things coming at you from left base that could decimate your business. I mean, 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 fifty pounds. It wrote off fifteen million pounds off my PNL when I'd only expected to make six.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So one of my classic styles would be to say, you know, it's 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. And so I played basic versus bonus and versus ambition. So they knew if they 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 ambition. But it's a really difficult thing in a market, as volatile as the mobile phone business was because...”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the the numbers and b they get the full bonus”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Either competitors, they all wanted them. 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 contrary 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 big.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've always been criticised for not praising people enough. Always been criticised for that 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 wheel because we were the leaders in the UK. And I was reputed to be a hard taskmaster and drive people to achieve the very best. All of my people were poached and”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we can all focus on our successes, but it's not our successes that make us successful. It's our failures in 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, try and do it in a constructive way, it's still a criticism. 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because my attention to detail is immense, and I pick up on the tiniest things. One of my directors once said to me in frustration, I might add, it wasn't complementary because I'd picked up on something. He said, you know, 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 these early attributes showed themselves when I was four or five. But I do think, to your point of insecurity, that having that insecurity does drive you on a lot further. You know, I hate failure and love success. And is that born out of insecurity? Well, I think to a point, but it's also born 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 of course, also judgment comes into it because you've got to have impeccable judgment to try and see through what the end result might be. To whatever you're trying to change.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“not necessarily contentious in the way you approach people, but contentious in the way you approach situations and systems or methodologies. So 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 come into a business and they need to do something different than the predecessor. And they make change for change's 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unreflective and maybe regret my actions. So I'm very, very quick to be self-admonishing. And then sometimes I'd say, well, I think to myself, well, 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's just has to be that way. But I'd still be self-critical. I mean, I think criticism, especially self-criticism, is one of the most powerful things in life. 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 content.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think almost immediately afterwards. Really If I was angry about something, 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was a hard taskmaster. And I've never regretted that. But at times, my hardness turned into unfairness. And I was upset by. And I'd usually recognize it afterwards. Maybe not always. Maybe there's people out there that say, oh no, 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 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. 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And understanding those mistakes, understanding that what had done might have been hurtful or damaging to another human being, realizing I didn't want to be that person that caused difficulty. Running the business, it was a very, very, very tough environment. I grew from nothing to 12,000 employees from zero 2.4 billion turnover.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 I think it's the number one quality people need. I mean, there's lots of other important 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 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I, as a father, am going to be just the happiest man alive. And your happiness might mean that you have to be successful. It might mean that you 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, look, you were wrong to take that attitude with me, but let's just forget it now. Yeah, we all make mistakes. I think if you've got spirit and carrot and drive and passion, you're always going to be full of human failings. And the trick is to minimize those human failings and to maximize what a human being should be with acts of kindness and looking after people. And 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,”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a very good question. 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 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 actually the biggest sense of satisfaction to me. So yes, I make lots of mistakes. I made one yesterday. I was irritated with my partner because she interrupted a meeting and then got a bit off.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 learnt to make sure that all the people in my life that mattered felt extremely loved by me and that I told them that on a daily basis because the camcoma point when it's too late.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, in the early days we lived with my grandmother, my grandmother didn't like my mother. I think she was a very jealous person. She adored me, so my relationship with my grandmother was amazing. She would do anything for me, but at the same time she treated my mother very, very badly. 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, for me, fears and almost at times. 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 a very, very tough days and very formative days. But, you know, and you can look back and say, I wish it had been different and your listeners might expect that I would say that, but I absolutely don't. I would never.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was just the way he was. And I think when I've spoken to some of his friends 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. And he came back and he got a lot of wonderful qualities. He would never see anybody in trouble. He was almost the first AA. Without 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 to that on one count. I'd have to wait in the car for an L while he fixed the car, but I knew 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 childhood of where I'd got a lot of respect for my father in some ways, but in other ways the way he treated me.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“to yet a different generation. So he put me on an old army and navy shoes from the Army and Navy store 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not at the time but in more recent years probably came to understand it. I think certainly one of the points was that I was quite a rebellious child. We were brought up in the back streets of Stokhon, Trent in the terrace houses and 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 she asked where I was, oh we don't know. We haven't seen him and I'd be hiding even behind somebody's front courtyard wall. So I was a nuisance. And I was difficult as a child and 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 had been brought up with certain strange values, really, that didn't really work very well. He hadn't made a transition.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would certainly be to do with my childhood because my father was not the kindest to me, not abusive in a way maybe 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. It's quite a true point.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was sitting on the edge of my seat nearly every day for twenty years, facing threat after threat after threat after threat. It did nearly finish me, or I think anybody's would, you know, because you can't work twenty two hours a day. Under immense pressure. It's a monster deal, the biggest that's 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, he 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.”
2022-03-10 · The Diary of a CEO · Phones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT