The Diary of a CEOPhones 4u Founder: The Pain Of Becoming A Billionaire: John Caudwell | E124
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,085 words- 0:00 – 1:10
Intro
- SBSteven Bartlett
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.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I grew from nothing to 12,000 employees, 2.4 billion turnover.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Jon Caudwell, the billionaire founder of Phones 4U. As it relates to his wealth, he has it all, but it's come at a real cost.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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, and I think anybody's would, you know, because you can't work 22 hours a day-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... under immense pressure. It was a monster deal, the biggest that'd ever been done in the marketplace by anybody.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. (upbeat music)
- 1:10 – 10:06
Your early years
- SBSteven Bartlett
"I suppose if I'd had a little bit more love, I would've been happier." Do you remember saying that?
- JCJohn Caudwell
(laughs) I don't actually, but I can understand why I might have said it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why do you think you might have said that?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Um, it's, yeah, it- it would certainly be to do with my childhood, um, because my father was, uh, not the kindest to me. Uh, not abusive, but, no... In a way, I, you know, 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, it's quite a true point.
- SBSteven Bartlett
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?
- JCJohn Caudwell
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, uh, 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 they, when she asked where I was, "Oh, we don't know. We haven't seen him." And I'd be hiding 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, uh, 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- it just got some strange values. I mean, I- I suppose, uh, in today's age you would say that was child abuse, but, um, um, it was just the way he was and I d- and I think, uh, when I've spoken to s- 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- and he- he came back and he'd got a lot of wonderful qualities. He would never see anybody in trouble. He was almost the first AA without it being paid for because he was an engineer, very capable, very eng- 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- one count, um. 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 a half a crown was gonna come my way as a result.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, um, I realize that you- you lost your mother recently, so I wanted to first say I'm sorry for your loss.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah. Thank you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I know that, um, it can't be easy coming and doing this so soon after, so I- I also want to thank you for, you know, coming and doing this because I know that, I, well, I can't imagine, you know, the- the difficulty of all of that. Um, I- 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, 'cause I know that's really s- really, really formative in your story, uh, as well. So what was the relationship like with your mother and your father and you as a, as a three?
- JCJohn Caudwell
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 were 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 times... 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, uh, and very formative days.Um, but, you know, a- and you can look back and say, "I wish it had 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 learnt 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 there can come a point when it's too late.
- SBSteven Bartlett
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, their children in the same way. I sometimes worry, especially as, 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, 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, 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, "Ugh, I need to not, I need to not pass that on, I need to not repeat that cycle?"
- JCJohn Caudwell
Hmm. It's a very good question. Um, I'm a long, long way off perfect, so I do recognize characteristics in myself very regularly that I don't admire, but I've learnt 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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Um, I do have my father's temper.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Um, I do have characteristics of my father, um, but by and large, I'm very comfortable with who I am because, uh, I do a huge amount of positive things in life for everybody in my life-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... and it's, it's actually the biggest sense of satisfaction to me. So yes, I make lots of mistakes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I made one yesterday, you know. I was irritated with my partner because she interrupted a meeting, and then got a bit, uh, off with me because I couldn't take the call, and I got angry with her.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
You know, and then I rang her up later and said, "Look, you were wrong t- to take that attitude with me, but, uh, but, uh, you know, let's just forget it now."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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 gonna be, uh, full of human failings-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... 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, um, 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, uh, 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, am gonna be just the happiest man alive, and, and your happiness might mean that you have to be successful. It might mean that you have to be a, 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.
- 10:06 – 18:01
What techniques have helped you become self-aware?
- JCJohn Caudwell
- SBSteven Bartlett
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 at yourself in the mirror or from a bird's eye view and say, "This is not good and I, I wanna improve on that thing?"
- JCJohn Caudwell
Do you know? Uh, I- I think there's been no epiphany. I think, uh, the epiphany was when I was young-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... learning that lesson about fairness, that fairness is crucial, and I, and I think it's the number one quality people need. I mean, there's lots of other important one, ones like loyalty and faithfulness and so on and so forth, uh, 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, a youngster. After that, it was all developmental, recognizing the mistakes I was making, one after another.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Feedback from the consequences.
- JCJohn Caudwell
And, uh, understanding those mistakes, understanding that what I'd done might have been hurtful or damaging to another human being, and realizing that I didn't want to be that person-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... that caused difficulty. Um, uh, you know, and, and wh- running the business, it was a very, very, very tough environment. I, 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, I'd usually recognize it afterwards. Maybe not always. Maybe there's, uh, people out there that say, "Oh, no, you're a, 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-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... but I am only human.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, do, uh, 'cause I can r- 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, "Do you know what? I rea- I think I should've handled that situation with s- with maybe a little bit more empathy."
- JCJohn Caudwell
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or, "My reaction probably didn't get the best out of the people in that-"
- JCJohn Caudwell
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"... situation." Was it those reflective moments on your own where you look back on it, or was it years later, um-
- JCJohn Caudwell
Do you know? I think almost immediately afterwards.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- JCJohn Caudwell
If I, if I, 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-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... and reflective, and maybe regret my actions.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
So I'm very, very quick to be self-admonishing, and, and then sometimes, I'd say, well, I, I think to myself, "Well, uh, 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 'cause it's the r- it, it, it just has to be that way. But I'd still be self-critical.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I mean, you know, and 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, of 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 a- a- approach people, but c- 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 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."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JCJohn Caudwell
Now, that's a mixed message, I know.
- SBSteven Bartlett
For sure.
- 18:01 – 22:39
Criticism vs recognition with employees
- JCJohn Caudwell
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was just saying to my manager yesterday, I, I was saying, "I think the, the balance that I need to be better at striking is I spend too much time focused on possible improvements and not e- e- 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?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Without doubt.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have you f- have you found that the- there needs to be a, a healthy balance between the two, or is that okay?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Well, I've always been criticized for not praising people enough.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Always been 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 taskmaster and drive people to achieve the very best. All of my people were poached-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... by their 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 of a feeling of 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 pe- people feel valued. I'd run competitions, I'd do all sorts of things. But one of the smartest things I probably did, well, 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, the numbers, and B, they get the full bonus. 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 bo- 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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
But it's a really difficult thing in a ma- in a market as, as volatile as the mobile phone business was, because it was colossally, colossally volatile. And it was really difficult, if you, if you made £5 million this year on the one particular business, it was de- very difficult to say with th- 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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I mean, one of my businesses in 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, uh, having delivered a huge amount of stock into my warehouse, and dropped the price overnight in the marketplace by £50. It wrote off £15 million off my P&L when I'd only expected to make six.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(exhales)
- JCJohn Caudwell
So there was all of those issues all the time. I mean, it was really a fight to the bitter end, yeah, to grow my business. So it was a very, very tough environment.
- 22:39 – 26:59
What skills made you great in business?
- JCJohn Caudwell
- SBSteven Bartlett
I really want to get on to the, to, to that, which is how tough it was scaling that business to, you know, the tremendous valuation it reached and, 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 r- 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 y- very uniquely good at this stuff, but I know I'm terrible at X, Y, and Zed." 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 ser- you know, Richard Branson, uh, uh, and so on, uh, 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...
- JCJohn Caudwell
Um...
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Well, I think, first of all, one of my unique points was the complete opposite of what you just said.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- JCJohn Caudwell
It was that I was good at everything-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right, right, right.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... but not great at everything.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right, right, right.
- JCJohn Caudwell
So I, I was good at everything. I was usually the best at any one of the areas of my employees.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
And what my goal was always to, was to have somebody in a discipline that was, uh, 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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah, okay.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I was good at 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, um, my commercial intellect was the real, the real massive attribute, uh, along with resilience. If you look at my six critical success fe- 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 tho- those two. If you look at my weaknesses, I managed to plug those because whilst I was a great innovator, and I'd s- I'd say, "Right, that's what we're gonna do now. 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 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 onto the next brainwave, you know-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... a- and onto the next creation. Whilst I have 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-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... somebody to do that for me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Quick one. For many years, people have been asking for a coffee-flavored Huel, and quite recently, Huel released the iced coffee caramel flavor of their, um, ready-to-drink Huels, and I've just become hooked on it e- 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-drinks. 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, um, flavor of Huel's ready-to-drink, and now I'm drinking that as well as the protein. Make sure you try the new ready-to-drink flavors. The, the caramel flavor's amazing. The, um, 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 Huel. Back to the podcast, please.
- 26:59 – 33:29
How does one build resilience
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things you, you described earlier is, um, one of your s- strength factors or success factors was this, this word resilience. Now, as you look at your life, before we go into the im- the key moments where it was important for you to be resilient and all of the turmoil you went through, th- 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 a, a, you know, you went through a bit of a tumultuous, um, childhood, and there was a lot of stress put on you, which you learnt how to deal with, which, uh, you know, f- having sat here with a lot of people, a- and people that had a certain resilience to them, it tends to be the case that they've been through quite a, a tough molding to, to build that. Is that accurate?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Um, well, I absolutely think that I was born with it. It's a characteristic that you're born with. Um, y- y- y- you're born with a... You can see all round the world, you're, 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 their level of resilience in that somebody might need. Uh, whether the upbringing adds to that resilience or detracts, I wouldn't really know. In 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-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... 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, you know. If you've got these characteristics that are positive, th- 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-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... that that would make them stronger-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... 'cause 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. He said, "I can't come in today," um, and I won't mention his name 'cause he might be embarrassed by it, but, uh, I said, "Where, w- w- where are... What's happened? Where are you?" He said, uh, "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 him, "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, a bit of a nervous breakdown. Now, that didn't make him stronger. What... Fortunately, I gave him about two or three months off work, and he did recover, and when he came back to work, I take- 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 on a multiple level there, a success story that you've rescued somebody-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... but, um, but those sorts of pressures, I was under every day, and I never cracked. Now, why? Was it because of my upbringing, or was I just gifted at birth? And I, and I think it's this birthright that, you know, you're just so lucky if you're born with those qualities-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... and then you can try and make them the best that you can do after that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I, I resonate w- with what you've said there in terms of, uh, I, I it ... 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-
- JCJohn Caudwell
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that are, um-
- JCJohn Caudwell
True.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... suffering.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I've, I struggled with that-
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... because, because I do feel like, you know, I went through a fairly stressful ... My company went public, and I grew it from my, my bedroom when I was 20-odd years old. Um, and I struggled for a while with u- understanding why people didn't think the way that I thought-
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and couldn't deal with the things-
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that I could deal with.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that was a ... And I, I came to, uh, maybe an understanding at 23 that that was a real risk, if I couldn't em- emphasize with the fact that people's brains weren't the same as mine and they didn't have the same level of drives. You know?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you r- do you relate to that?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Oh, absolutely (laughs) . I'm still struggling with it now (laughs) .
- 33:29 – 54:33
Your hardest moments in business
- SBSteven Bartlett
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. We're finished.”
- JCJohn Caudwell
Oh my gosh. I mean, I've had thousands, but, uh, uh, and they were all at a different level of crisis. I'll, I'll deal with-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... the first that, that really worried me. Um, I, I was a Mitch- uh, Michelin, uh, Tire Company engineer. I was, uh, a foreman, um, o- in the, uh, tire-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 sale site, and opened up this car sale site, but I hadn't really got enough money to stock it properly. So, I went to my mother, and, uh, I said, "Could we mortgage your house, Mum? And that'll allow us to buy, um, another 20 cars," I think it was, "from the, from the mortgage that we'd, 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 Malvern Hills, buy you a lovely house there, and so you'll do well out of it." She didn't even hesitate. W- which is remarkable, really, because, you know, I'd got no s- real proper success, um, history there for her to judge from. Um, she just did it out of 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, um, 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, uh, it was th- one of those winters that were just horrendous back almost before you were b- oh, probably was before you were born actually (laughs) .
- SBSteven Bartlett
'92?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Sorry?
- SBSteven Bartlett
'92?
- JCJohn Caudwell
No, it was before then, it was about '80 ... 1982 perhaps. Um, but it, but they dropped off a cliff. Uh, now, we weren't in financial difficulty, but the trajectory would've put us on it, and I started really, really, really panicking. And there was not much I could do about it, 'cause 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, 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 Michelin Tire Company, I was doing 50 hours a week there. Um, 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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(exhales)
- JCJohn Caudwell
Uh, I remember for a period of six months, I worked 22 hours a day, one week in three, 'cause I was on night shift at Michelin that week. And on that night shift, I'd get home at 7:00 AM, I'd have two hours with my, well, one and a half, two hours with my wife, uh, and off I'd be going to the auctions, buying cars during the day, running the car sales site at night until I went to work at 11 o'clock on the, uh, night shift again. And I did that one week in three for about six months.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- JCJohn Caudwell
It did nearly finish me. I was on tranquilizers because it was, I was retching and I was so, uh, disturbed. You know, I, I was in a real mess, but I was able to function. And that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you say tranquilizers, you mean, like, anti-anxiety?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Uh, yeah. Yes, I think they were, um... If I remember rightly, I think they were Librium, um, just a, a ca- uh, uh, sedative that the doctor had given me. I wasn't feeling anxious, um, I, my nervous system was just shot, and 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.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have you seen throughout your career how your body ends up holding the score? There's a 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. 'Cause I noticed in my business, whenever we had payroll issues, or when, whenever cash got tight, I would get sick.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like, I would, the, 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 I, and I, although I thought I was this, like, tough guy, that he could just, he was dealing with everything, clearly my body had its own, you know, mind.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Yeah. I, I've sort of been quite lucky mostly, 'cause that's the only time I can remember my body rebelling. But I think anybody's would, you know, because you can't work 22 hours a day-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... under immense pressure. You just cannot do it. I'd get an hour and a half sleep. You know, uh, doing that for seven nights, seven days, you just, you just, I don't think anybody could probably do it. Uh, 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, it calmed this whatever, this retching was, it calmed it down, I was okay. And then I had no other symptoms. And this is just pure luck of life, you know? It's just the luck of life that, uh, nothing's been able to cave me in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
And, uh, I, you know, there was a, I was thinking when I answered that question, "Did I tell you about my mother?" Well, I told you that because it's very topical for me at the moment, having l- 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 her down. But, uh, in the early years of, uh, Cellular, we had... Probably 90% of our business was through Motorola. Motorola were world leaders by a long way. And, uh, the r- 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, 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, 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 gain 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, they would encourage me to do something, then they might get a complaint because I'd exported to China. Perfectly legitimately, but I'd exported to China and they didn't like that. So then they get a complaint from the Chinese, you know, uh, uh, 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 then had to come and say, "Well, you mustn't do that again." But then they'd still encouraged 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 in Stoke-On-Trent, and, uh, 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'd got 60 or 70 employees, huge overheads, and Motorola was 90% 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?
- SBSteven Bartlett
You tell me.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Well, the way I dealt with it was every- every challenge in life, whether it's business, personal, or anything, it's 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- I just looked at the marketplace, and there was lots of service providers who were the people that sold the airtime 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 I 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 out 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 the 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, bit of a hard nut, uh, we did just get on very, very well. Nokia had only got 1% 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." Um, we did a deal with one of their old stock items that they'd failed with completely, and I bought 3,000 units, which doesn't sound much now. I mean, I bought about every second one almost in-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JCJohn Caudwell
... later days of- of Cordwell, but, uh- uh, at that time, it was a monster deal, the biggest that'd 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. Now, 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 that Nokia had decided to get aggressive. They'd decided that they didn't want to be a nobody in the mobile phone business. They'd got a new phone coming out, the 101, and they really wanted to capture market share. Well, 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 it, 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 at 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 'cause that was good for my business, and I- and I was really, really upset with Motorola because they'd tried to kill me, you know? They'd tr-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
A- and if I hadn't been able to find solutions, I would've- I would've been bankrupt. I wouldn't have survived. So we got this Nokia 101, and we absolutely blasted it out through our ra- resale premises, through our airtime retailer services, and through just pure wholesale, and we built Nokia up to 20% market share in a year.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- JCJohn Caudwell
And commensurately, 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 world lead- well, we helped them to get to UK leader, uh, and helped Motorola's massive decline. And, um, listeners might think, "Oh, that's, you know, a bit- a 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?
- 54:33 – 59:48
What was the cost of building businesses?
- JCJohn Caudwell
It's just who I am.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Being dragged by that sense of mission towards that North Star of the Rolls-Royce, giving out the £5 notes, or even now with all the charitable work you do, you, you describe it as not being a choice, which kind of means that it's just like you- 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, is you, you said at the time you didn't have any friends throughout that period.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you described, you know, those 20 years as, as 20 years of grief. Talk to me about the loneliness point. You... Yeah, I heard you say, I think it was on Desert Island Discs, your interview there, that you, you didn't have friends.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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, w- I was really close to. Craig Bennett, who was my finance director, was the one that 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, ne- never came to fruition.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I wouldn't ever want to go back to that, because I've now got 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 Caldwell 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, and Tilly has type two muscular atrophy, which stops all the muscles working. Um, she actually won, of her own absolute brilliance and effort, a scholarship at Stamford University. I mean, it's unbelievable.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's unbelievable, yeah.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Now, I'm not responsible for that. I helped, 'cause 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 Stamford University. We went for a coffee together.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JCJohn Caudwell
And, uh, she's in a wheelchair, the one that we supplied, you know, with the little joystick buzzing along the pavement. I'm there on my bike. I'd cycled down from my son's house. I'm there cycling along. She's, uh, in her wheelchair. We get to Starbucks. I go and buy her a 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, uh, gives her a bit, gives a little bit of extra stiffness. And this coffee's quite a big coffee, and she lifts it up, and I'm thinking, "I didn't really know, understand how she was doing that," which clearly I didn't understand how this 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."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JCJohn Caudwell
"And one of them..." Well, the foot pedals motorize-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... this, this, this bracket-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, wow.
- JCJohn Caudwell
... that lifts her arm. So she'd got power-assisted arm, 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 Stamford University, you know, 6,000, 5,000 miles from home.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
I mean, it's amazing. And joy 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 Tillys of this world? No. Can't even begin to compete. (page turns)
- SBSteven Bartlett
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 a brand 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 jewelry is all about meaning, and so we forged a new partnership. The piece of jewelry I wear the most, I wanna introduce you to the pieces and why I wear them, is this sand timer, unsurprisingly. And the thing for me about a 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.
- 59:48 – 1:04:48
When was the moment you decided to give away your wealth?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(page turns) We get to the end of your story at, at Phones 4 U and, um, and you've, you've had this tremendous, you know, exit which put- makes you a billionaire. What, what- was there a pivotal moment where you, th- the penny dropped for you that you would, your next sort of source of meaning would be setting up Caldwell Children and doing so much, sort of, philanthropy, and the, the pledge you made to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to give away your, your, your worth, and the initiatives you've, you've launched with the Great British Entrepreneur Awards to support young people into, into their, their, their, their career paths? Was there a pivotal moment where you decided that this was now your new meaning?
- JCJohn Caudwell
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, uh, describe the difficulties and challenges I faced and 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- 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 100% focused. One day, the, uh, uh, the NSPCC came to me and said, "There's a Lord Tavener'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 Tavener's cricket match in Stone. Would you sponsor it?"And they gave me the details, and I thought, "Well, it's not gonna raise a lot of money." And, um, 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 ground. 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 an- uh, got me to come down to a center and have a, uh, have a, uh, an understanding of the work they did, which I didn't really understand. I, 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, and 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'll 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. And 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, uh, as president of the North Staffs branch for a short period of time. W- 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, seeing 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 Caudwell 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 helped 60,000 and still growing enormously now. And to avoid the criticisms that the NSPCC had, which was that the overheads were high, and I'm not criticizing the fact, 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 Caudwell 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. And that's what we did.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's a... It's, it's, it's in- just tr- deeply, tremendously inspiring, and, um,
- 1:04:48 – 1:15:30
Your child falling ill
- SBSteven Bartlett
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 s- your son, Rufus, got sick with Lyme disease.
- JCJohn Caudwell
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 with the NSPCC and saw these tragic cases of abuse. And then when I set up Caudwell Children's for all these children that so desperately needed help, and who had been born with nothing, you know, in a tr- in a traumatic situation, and, uh, I f- I felt unbelievably lucky, and that luck lasted for, I suppose, six years. Uh, I think Rufus fell ill, no, seven or eight years, and then Rufus fell ill with Lyme disease and PANS/PANDAS, 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 ill with anxiety.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Anx- with anxiety?
- JCJohn Caudwell
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 th- went to boarding school, but as their request. It 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 eczema, 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, 'cause as much as they wanted to go to boarding school, after a 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... Y- y- y- y- you k- it's a- 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 and we just go." He said, "No, Dad, this is different." And I said, "What? What do you mean?" He said, "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." 'Cause I'd had it with my other children, I knew exactly what was going on, or so I thought. Anyway, I never, didn't, d- 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 that he couldn't leave the home. Well, it must've 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, uh, retrograde, looking at his life and blah, blah, blah, blah. Were 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 already for about, uh, uh, uh, probably the best part of about eight, nine years already, um, we found out that he'd got Lyme disease. Um, we didn't know about PANS/PANDAS then. Now, Lyme disease can show as a set of physical and neur- uh, uh, conditions, but also neurological. It can attack the brain and cause neurological situations where your brain isn't able to respond appropriately and normally because of this bacterial infection. Um, we treated him for that, but he didn't, he never really... uh, he just deteriorated, carried on deteriorating to the point where he was utterly suicidal. He'd lie on the bed rocking all day, pulling his hair out, screaming, screaming. He just wanted to die. And he's, he's since told us that the only reason he didn't kill himself was because we were there fighting every second of the day to keep him alive and fighting with the authorities and the medical people to try and find a solution. And he was like my mother, really, surrounded by love. And if you surround somebody by love, it makes it more difficult for them to, to do something. Not that that would stop everybody. But, you know, he... Rufus said that's what kept him alive, and we kept him alive. We had to have 24 supervision in the bedroom in case he jumped out the window. Um, I don't know whether he ever would've done that, but th- that's the way it was. And it was a very traumatic period of my life for many, many years. Um, I'm lucky because my ex-wife was utterly devoted to him and looked after him. And when she was then no longer able to, my eldest daughter took on the mantle and became an amazing, amazing carer for him. And just looked after him to the, to her own self-sacrifice, massive self-sacrifice actually, 'cause she lived Rufus's life even though she'd got a husband and a life in America. She just lived Rufus's life with him. Um, so we had all that amazing support. And then, we found out about PANS/PANDAS. And nobody knows about PANS/PANDAS, so it's one of my great big campaigns over the next few years to k- to, to make sure all the medical authorities understand PANS/PANDAS, understand that it's a real illness, understand the symptoms, and, and start working out what the very best treatment is. Anyway, we found some experts and they've been treating PANS/PANDAS for a few years. So, we, we took Rufus over and, uh, Jenny Frankovich, this expert on, uh, PANS/PANDAS, started treating him. Anyway, he still didn't really get a lot better. He had ups and downs. But he, he'd got these horrible, horrible symptoms that PANS/PANDAS people get. Um, they get a whole range of symptoms and, uh, I hope your listeners will go onto the PANS/PANDAS website and look at these symptoms because some of your listeners will have a young child who is suffering from PANS/PANDAS and they won't be getting the help that they need or the diagnosis. So, I really hope they go on and look at this because it might transform their lives and the lives of their chil- child. But this is a big challenge I've got going forward to get this out there, this message out there. And it's quite easily identifiable at first because it's the same thing. It's a collapse of somebody that's fairly sudden, unexpected, and for not really any identifiable reason. And there's a whole range of symptoms, but some of those are absolutely anxiety, fear. Now, in Rufus' case, he went on to develop all sorts of symptoms like air hunger, which is horrendous. And air hunger is best described... I mean, I can't describe it really very well because I've never... I don't, I don't really understand it. But Rufus has described it as like somebody puts a plastic bag over your head and seals it, and you're gasping (gasps) like this for every last breath until it passes. And that's one of the, uh, symptoms and the things that happen is one of these anxieties. Agoraphobia, emetophobia, a whole range of, uh, of symptoms and lots of others as well. Anyway, eventually we ended up moving Rufus down to, um... from Stamford down to LA where we'd found a whole psychiatric team. We wanted to put him in a clinic first of all, but now bearing in mind he couldn't travel. Every time we moved him even, even five miles from the house was traumatic. Traumatic for him and traumatic for us. Anyway, we did manage to get him to, uh... I actually bought a £200,000 American motor home, put wifi in it to try and make the journey tolerable to him in concept and in reality. Uh, but it was still traumatic taking him down in this win- Winnebago. And anyway, we got him under this team of people. I'm not gonna tell the story from thereon because it was... it's a bit long and a- and also, um, there's a lot more trauma to come. But he's now in really great shape. He's not cured, but he's living a good life and a happy life and, uh, can liaise and relate to everything and, and he's inspiring other people. So, it's, uh, it- it's... I hope that the trauma that we've been through, that he's been through, more important, uh...... we can turn to making him the biggest ambassador for PANS/PANDAS and for using his, um, dreadful situation to help hundreds of thousands of other children around the world to avoid it or understand it and deal with it better.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's wonderfully, um, inspiring and it's, it's also really incredible to hear that he's, he's living a, a life where, where he has found happiness and he's able to, to create a life, despite not being fully cured, that is, um, uh, you know, has meaning to it, so.
- JCJohn Caudwell
And we hope... We, we are hoping for a full cure. You know, we're hoping that he'll be able to travel one day soon. But for the moment, he can just go down... We got him this house specially right on the side of Beverly Hills. I mean, also wealth comes into this. You know, we're so lucky to have the wealth because if/when you get a child like that, like our children with Caudwell children, you haven't got the resources to help them, it's devastating. You've got the most devastating situation with your child, but you're unable to do anything financially to do what you need to do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
Anyway, uh, we bought him this house on the side of Hollywood Hills, and he's only five minutes away from, um, Sunset Boulevard.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
So, he's got a life commuting between the two, girlfriend, and a lovely life, you know.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- JCJohn Caudwell
And all we need to do now is get him to the next level where he can travel and maybe, um, find a meaningful, um, f-form of employment to give him proper satisfaction. That might just be spreading the word of PANS/PANDAS and I pay a wage to do that, you know, but whatever it is, uh, I think he's on, definitely on the pathway to a fulfilling life. And, and that's thanks to my daughter, my ex-wife, and all the effort my family have put in alongside Jenny Frankovitch in, in Stanford and, uh, the psychiatrists in, uh, in LA. So, it is quite a happy result, and, uh, and I think that there's... There's, you know, there's an old expression, "Where there's life, there's hope." And there is really hope for those PANS/PANDAS kids, but we need to get the message out.
- 1:15:30 – 1:17:15
What have you learnt about what actually matters?
- SBSteven Bartlett
When I hear that story and I reflect on another experience which we haven't talked about, which was you getting almost, uh, critically injured on your bike last year when you were cycling and you broke, I don't know, was it 12, 12 bones? And I mean, that was a near-death experience for you, the loss of your mother recently. What have you learned about, through these moments of grief and, you know, near-death experiences of your own and, you know, the situation with Rufus, what have you learned about what, what actually matters in life?
- JCJohn Caudwell
Well, I, I, I think I always really knew, I just wasn't very good at implementing it, and that's, um, just, I, I think loving people, caring for society, making the world a better place. And I think if you can do that, no matter who you are, no matter how little money you've got, if you can just contribute to society in a positive way, the feelings are immensely positive. Um, but there's the obvious lessons that health is critical. I mean, I did nearly die on that, uh, mountain road in Italy. I could have had a death from four or five different reasons because the injuries were so severe. Um, and health is utterly, utterly vital. But, uh, but that's an obvious statement, but I think when you've experienced as much ill health as I have, mainly with my family, but also these accidents I've had, which have been an endless stream of accidents over the last 40 years, which are self-imposed. You know, it's entirely my own fault. It's the way I live my life. I live my life for, for, for thrills, you know, as well as making the pl- world a better place, I have my own world, which is, you know, fairly adventurous and risky.
- 1:17:15 – 1:20:39
Romantic relationships
- JCJohn Caudwell
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the last thing I wanted to ask you about is, I, I guess it's a bit of advice, I guess, because I, in running my businesses ov- over the years and being a very driven, ambitious man, have, um, sacrificed, um, and not been very good historically at sustaining romantic relationships. You've, you've had, you know, you, you reference your former partner there with such admiration, and you have, you know, an amicable relationship with her, but over the years, what lessons have you learned about how to strive and be driven whilst also trying to maintain, um, an, uh, a romantic relationship? And also, I'd say that the sub-question to that is, are romantic relationships important?
- JCJohn Caudwell
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- JCJohn Caudwell
I am male. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. Yeah. (laughs)
- JCJohn Caudwell
Um, I, I think the first thing is that I wouldn't change anything, uh, o- on that, and I was utterly focused at, at, at, on business to the detriment of my wife and family. But I, I say detriment self-critically 'cause I'm not sure it's... I'm not really sure that's true because I would al- I was always as kind as possible, always as loving as possible, and always would put important events forward. So, my children would probably say, if they, uh, said, "Did you get enough of Dad?" And they'd say, "Well, we didn't get that much of him, but when he mattered, when it mattered to us, he was there. When we'd got a problem, he was there." And I would alwa- If, if there was a significant problem, like that employee I told you about who was broken down. When there was a s- When somebody really needs me, I'm absolutely there for anybody important in my life. But I wasn't able to be a devoted, doting person, but it, it's who I am and I don't... You know, I probably wouldn't change it. But... So, this work/life balance, I don't believe in. Look, if you want to run a business, make sure that your wife's on board, make sure that she understands the potential sacrifices, and make sure you do, and make sure you've got the six critical success factors.And if all of those are ticks in the box, go for it. If there's a lack of ticks in the box, be cautious, because there's more people damaged by going into business than there is those people that are pleased that they're dead. It's not this romantic notion, "Oh, I'll run my own this, and we'll be wealthy, we'll have a lovely house and a beautiful car." It's not like that at all. It's hardship and graft for most people. Make sure you want it, make sure your wife and family want it, and then if all those boxes are ticks, yeah, fantastic. Go full steam ahead and give it everything you've got and make it a success. But just don't get yourself into a huge mess that you never really thought that could happen to you.
Episode duration: 1:22:12
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