John Caudwell | The British Billionaire Who Lost Everything… Then Built a $2B Empire

Summary

School of Hard Knocks Podcast — Episode Summary

Episode Title: John Caudwell | The British Billionaire Who Lost Everything… Then Built a $2B Empire
Date: March 20, 2026
Host: The School of Hard Knocks (James, Jack, Josh)
Guest: John Caudwell, British entrepreneur and philanthropist

---

Episode Overview

In this engaging and candid interview, British billionaire John Caudwell shares his journey from humble beginnings to creating and selling "Phones 4u" for £1.5 billion. John delves deep into the art of scaling a business, managing people, overcoming betrayal, and the harsh lessons of risk and resilience. He discusses the nuances of hiring, the importance of commercial intellect, why he stayed in the UK (and paid his taxes), and his passion for philanthropy and health. The episode offers invaluable lessons for entrepreneurs on building wealth, creating legacy, and the true measure of success.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Humble Beginnings & Early Struggles

• Starting Out (02:15–04:24):
  • John started with only himself and a few employees, losing £2,000 a month for two years.
  • A pivotal moment: After staffing losses, John himself took over operations and quickly turned a monthly loss into a £20,000 profit in one month, leveraging arbitrage and opportunity.
  • Quote: "Within four weeks, I turned the £2,000-a-month loss into £20,000 profit in one month. And it seemed easy to me. That was all to do with arbitrage. It was just opportunity and arbitrage." — John Caudwell (03:13)
  • Emphasizes the necessity of commercial intellect—an innate or developed "sixth sense" for business opportunity.

2. The People Puzzle: Hiring, Loyalty, and Leadership

• Paying for Talent (04:24–06:10):
  • Early advice that changed his trajectory: pay for quality people and expertise, even if expensive.
  • Quote: "If you pay people peanuts, you get monkeys. But you can get a bigger monkey—disloyal, Machiavellian, devious, disloyal. I had plenty of those." — John Caudwell (05:56)
  • The challenge in scaling: growing to 12,000 employees in 14 years, maintaining control, and finding the right managers.
  • The extensive recruitment process often required 3,000 applicants to find one truly successful hire.
  • Quote: "It's a rare form of intelligence. The people that go to Oxbridge or Harvard, they might be very smart, but they may not actually have that commercial intellect." — John Caudwell (17:59)
• Vertically and Horizontally Integrated Companies (07:07–08:08):
  • John created internal recruitment and support companies, initially to fulfill Phones 4u’s own needs, later as profit centers that sold services externally.

3. Hard Knocks: Betrayal & Business Warfare

• Supplier Betrayal: The Motorola Incident (08:08–11:27):
  • Motorola, John’s key supplier (95% of business), canceled his contract after their manager left to become a competitor—nearly ending Caudwell’s business.
  • Creative negotiation allowed him to source through service providers, secretly, and bounce back, before eventually helping Nokia overtake Motorola’s dominance.
  • Quote: "He resigned from Motorola and set up his own business with my contract, supply contract. So he became a competitor." — John Caudwell (09:18)

4. Mindset and Resilience

• Vision and Perseverance (12:01–12:56):
  • John foresaw the potential in mobile phones, reasoning that, just as landlines became universal, so would mobiles.
  • He relied on an unshakable belief in the sector and adaptability—spotting and acting on arbitrage opportunities at every turn.

5. Hiring, Commercial Intellect, & Nature vs. Nurture (15:12–20:43)

• On Talent:
  • Thousands sifted down to one to find the rare combination of ambition, drive, and commercial intellect.
  • Quote: "You’re definitely either sort of born with it or you’re not. But you can grow it massively…But you’ll never be like that guy that was born with it." — John Caudwell (19:01)

6. Risk, Margin, and Scale

• Running on Thin Margins (20:49–21:52):
  • Parts of the business ran on 1–5% profit margins—leading John to diversify into high-margin (but riskier) retail.
  • At its height, Phones 4u had 300 shops.
• Selling the Business (21:56–22:52):
  • Sold on a revenue multiple of about nine—not remarkable, but shaped by supplier vulnerability and a saturated industry.

7. Ethics, Legacy, and Philanthropy

• Staying in the UK and Paying Taxes (22:52–25:39):
  • John paid £200–300 million in taxes by choice, driven by patriotism, obligation, and humanitarianism.
  • Quote: "People ought to pay the taxes in the country that they've made the money in… The poorer members of society need that money." — John Caudwell (23:29)
• On Billionaire Philanthropy:
  • Observes that less wealthy people are often more philanthropic than billionaires, who tend to keep chasing more.
• Life After the Exit & True Legacy (26:27–28:28, 48:18–50:58):
  • Initial fear of losing identity after selling Phones 4u.
  • Ultimately saw his ability to do more charity work as the greater legacy.
  • Quote: “What is money if you don’t do something with it that changes lives? ... I'd much rather be remembered for somebody who helped in a small way to change the world in whatever way I can.” — John Caudwell (50:00)

8. Health, Balance, and Family

• Personal Health Journey (33:49–35:35):
  • Initially sacrificed health for business success; became highly health-conscious in his 40s, inspired by his father’s health issues.
• Raising Children and Redefining Success (36:05–38:49):
  • Now sees happiness and making the world a better place as true metrics for his children—removes pressure for them to “compete” with his accomplishments.
  • Quote: "If they are happy in their lives, and they leave the world a better place than they found it, I've succeeded massively as a father." — John Caudwell (36:05)

9. Real Estate, Investment, and Creativity

• Investing Philosophy (39:10–41:02):
  • Relies on location and personal commitment (“skin in the game”) when investing in people or properties.
  • Current projects include luxury developments in Cap d’Antibes and 1 Mayfair, aiming to be “the world’s most prestigious apartment block.”
• Creativity & Addiction to Excellence (45:23–48:07):
  • Now focuses on creativity and building legacy (“works of art”) rather than just wealth accumulation.
  • Admits to being "an addict" for dealmaking and perfection—it's in his DNA.

10. Sales, Honesty, and Principles

• Truth in Selling (42:46–44:47):
  • Built his reputation on absolute honesty in sales, often surprising customers, but never losing a sale nor getting a complaint.
  • Quote: "I guarantee you, you will have times when you want to break that phone…but if you want a mobile phone or if you need one, then just put up with the problems. And I never got a complaint, ever. And I never lost a sale." — John Caudwell (44:47)

11. Final Reflections & Advice

• On Losing It All (48:33–49:55):

  • Claims he’d be content without wealth, as long as he retained health and purpose ("my bike"). Luxury is enjoyed but not needed.
  • Quote: "I've still got a pauper's mind. But I'm surrounded in luxury… but the luxury doesn't seduce me." — John Caudwell (48:33)

• On What Matters (48:18–48:25):

  • "Be humanitarian, look after your fellow man."

• Encouragement for Billionaires (51:31–52:07):

  • "Pay your taxes, give more to charity, help me to do the work that I'm doing… Be good humans, be humanitarian, make the world a better place… The spiritual satisfaction out of helping other people… will be way better than a Chanel handbag or a super yacht." — John Caudwell (51:31)

---

Notable Quotes — Quick Reference

• On Commercial Intellect:
  “It’s a rare form of intelligence…you’re definitely either sort of born with it or you’re not… But you can grow it massively.” (19:01)

• On Taxes and Legacy:
  “People ought to pay the taxes in the country that they've made the money in… The poorer members of society need that money.” (23:29)
  “What does it really mean to be wealthy? What's money if you don't do something with it that changes lives?” (50:00)

• On Risk and Resilience:
  “If you lose 95% of your business when you're only on probably 5% margin, … it's terminal. … But I found a solution… and I bailed myself out in about two weeks.” (08:35–10:35)

• On Honesty in Sales:
  "You can't ever be caught out in a lie because your credibility is shot to bits… I never got a complaint… And I never lost a sale." (44:47)

• On What Matters Most:
  "If they are happy in their lives, and they leave the world a better place than they found it, I've succeeded massively as a father." (36:05)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Early company and turning losses to profit: 02:15–04:24
• Recruitment philosophy / commercial intellect: 15:12–20:43
• Scaling & supplier betrayal (Motorola incident): 08:08–11:27
• Vertical/horizontal integration: 07:19–08:08
• Transition to philanthropy & selling business: 22:52–28:28
• Children, success, and happiness: 36:05–38:49
• Investment and real estate philosophy: 39:10–41:02
• Honesty and sales principles: 42:46–44:47
• Advice to next generation & legacy: 48:18–50:58
• Final call for billionaire philanthropy: 51:31–52:07

---

Memorable Moments

• John’s unwavering honesty, even when selling products with known flaws: "They're abysmal… But if you want one, just put up with the problems."
• Surviving near-total business loss when a key supplier's manager defected—by outmaneuvering them in weeks.
• His assertion: "I've got a pauper’s mind. But I'm surrounded in luxury… the luxury doesn't seduce me."
• The heartfelt, childlike vision: being chauffeur-driven in a Rolls Royce, handing out money to the poor — a dream that fused ambitions for both wealth and charity.

---

Concluding Takeaways

• Commercial intellect is rare but crucial, and best tested by results, not just credentials.
• Scaling requires relentless pursuit for the best people—attract, test, and don’t be afraid to pay.
• Be resilient in the face of betrayal; always seek the arbitrage, the edge no one else sees.
• Wealth is a byproduct; true success is measured in legacy—a legacy of impact, happiness, and humanity.
• Stay grounded; health and purpose outweigh luxury.
• Philanthropy is not just a moral obligation—it's the ultimate fulfillment of wealth, "a spiritual satisfaction" that surpasses material excess.

---

Listeners will find John Caudwell’s wisdom both candid and actionable—a masterclass in not just building empires, but building a life that matters.

Transcript

[James]

You sold your company in 2006 for,

[John Caldwell]

let the people know, £1.5 billion.

[James]

Not dollars, not dollars.

[Jack]

You said that you would need 3,000 applicants just to find maybe one successful person.

[John Caldwell]

The people that go to Oxbridge or Harvard, they might be very smart, but they may not actually have that commercial intellect.

[Jack]

They're not greasy enough.

[John Caldwell]

You're definitely either born with it or you're not. How do you get good people? And the answer was pay the money.

[James]

If you pay people peanuts, you get monkeys. But you said that you can get an even bigger monkey.

[John Caldwell]

You get a bigger monkey because you can. Disloyal monkey. Somebody who's Machiavellian, who's devious, disloyal. And I had plenty of those. I've always been a deal maker, and I sort of can't resist it, really.

[James]

This business that you were running that you eventually sold for over a billion pounds, you mentioned 4 or 5% margin.

[John Caldwell]

Well, in some parts of the business, I was working for a 1% margin, John.

[James]

That terrifies me.

[Jack]

And, John, if it was all said and done tomorrow, how would you want to be remembered?

[John Caldwell]

Well, journalists used to ask me that all the time, you know, and I originally said,

[James]

what's going on, everyone? Welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James. I'm here with Jack and Josh, and we have an incredible guest joining us today. First of all, 73 years old.

[John Caldwell]

73.

[James]

But you don't look a day over 60, man. You are the first British billionaire on the School of Hard Knocks podcast.

[John Caldwell]

You sold your company, especially one of 73 years old.

[James]

Let's go, my man. And you sold your company in 2006

[John Caldwell]

for, let the people know, £1.5 billion.

[James]

Not dollars.

[John Caldwell]

Not dollars. No.

[James]

How do we feel about the dollars?

[John Caldwell]

Dollars is a good currency, isn't it? It's the main currency of the world. And I've played the dollars many, many times on investments and made a lot of money out of them. So I feel very positive about the dollar.

[James]

You've become a real estate mogul now and a family man and philanthropist. You're doing everything now outside of exiting the company, and we're going to be diving into that today. But where I want to get things started. 1986.

[John Caldwell]

Correct?

[James]

1986. So it took you about 20 years to get to that exit. Go back to day one. Did you know, starting out, that you were going to turn that into a company that was one day going to sell for over a billion dollars?

[John Caldwell]

No. I mean, of course not. You know, it would be a ridiculous thought to come from nowhere, which is where I came from. From nowhere. When I set the business up, there was only me and I recruited two or three people and we lost £2,000 per month, every month for two years. Now, that doesn't sound a lot to you guys or anybody listening, but back in 1986, £2,000amonth was a lot of money for me to lose. I could afford it, but it was a lot to lose. And I had the biggest stroke of luck because I was running a car sales business at the time and I was running the mobile phone business. And the mobile phone business had three employees after two years and the manager left to go to Motorola, which I was really annoyed about because they were my main supplier and they poached him. And then two of my car salespeople, the two main people, left to join a competitor. And all of a sudden I got nobody, just me and my brother. And I decided to go into the mobile phone business to run it, to see what I could do with it, because I was fed up of losing the 2,000, 2,000amonth and, you know, within, within four weeks, I turned the £2,000amonth loss into £20,000 profit in one month. And it seemed easy to me. That was all to do with arbitrage. It was just opportunity and arbitrage. That's where sort of commercial intellect comes in. You know, you asked me earlier on what sort of qualities you need or what, what's the. You need commercial intellect and I can't tell you how you get that. Commercial intellect is this ability to sense what you need to do to make money, how you need to tip the playing field against the opposition. You're a football supporter. Just imagine if your team could play on a pitch like that where the ball was always rolling towards the opposite goal. That's what commercial intellect is, to set the parameters in such a way that you're already the ball rolling down the field to the opposition goal.

[James]

We were talking about it earlier out on Rodeo Drive that one of the most life changing conversations that you had in your business was when you were at a conference with a gentleman and he gave you a relatively, what seems to be a simple piece of advice, but it kind of changed your outlook on business per se, which was that pay people what they're worth. What was the exact piece of advice that you received?

[John Caldwell]

Well, it was just literally to how do you get good people? And the answer was pay the money. And it's such a simplistic thing to say, but I was right at the start of my career and I was employing people on, I wouldn't say low money, but I needed people of a lot higher caliber. So I decided that I just got to increase the salaries dramatically and I got four or five employees at the time. And I said to them, look, whatever happens with this advert that I'm going to put in, don't you worry about it. Because if the. If it proves that you're the best people and you outperforming the person I bring in, your wages will rise. Or I'll get remove the person that I've brought in. But we have to go to the next level. I have to bring expertise in anyway. I did bring expertise in, and they were much better than the people I'd got. I kept the people that I'd got because they were still good, but they weren't good enough to grow what was a burgeoning empire. So.

[James]

But the analogy that I gave you was is that if you pay people monkeys or. I'm sorry, I've been going on the analogy. If you pay people peanuts, you get monkeys. But you said that you can get an even bigger monkey there.

[John Caldwell]

You get a bigger monkey because you can get a disloyal monkey. Somebody who's Machiavellian, who's devious, disloyal, wants to rob you and is actually incompetent as well. And I had plenty of those. I had plenty of those that played a lot of money.

[James]

So you dealt with some people that weren't very good in businesses?

[John Caldwell]

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, I grew. I grew from me to 12,000 people. Just imagine that growth. You've done it in a big way. You know, what you guys have done is amazing. And you've now got 60 employees. But imagine going in 14 years to 10,000 people and trying to control all of that and trying to get the managers that were able to control that and drive each part of the business to be successful and to manage the people correctly because they're either too soft or too egotistical and too hard. You don't get that right balance with man management or very rarely. So that is a quest. It was my everlasting quest to get people in. In fact, as part of. You talked about vertical integration earlier on, as part of the horizontal and vertical integration.

[James]

So I've never heard this before. I was asking him about diversification and he said that, well, I diversified, but in a focused way. And I touched on. So we got a vertically integrated business, but you said you have. It's vertical and horizontally integrated. You got to.

[John Caldwell]

Well, let me explain this example because this, this one, this one was crucial to my success. We were having to recruit, especially when I set up phones for you and we wanted hundreds, hundreds of salespeople for the shops. So I set up my own recruitment company. So it's an internal recruitment company that was then to there to vertical integrate to provide all the employees for the whole organization that was recruiting hundreds every month. But then what I started doing was selling those services out to other people. So that business became a supplier to all my businesses and an external supplier. And that's what we did with all of them. So every business I set up was aimed to be a profit center for other people, to make money externally but also mainly to provide the services internally.

[James]

And you said that your suppliers though, when you got so big, they became your enemy.

[John Caldwell]

They always became the enemy. Yeah, and they were utterly ruthless, utterly Machiavellian and devious. And I can give you an amazing example of that because it was almost life ending for me. I'd got to the point of about 50 employees. It's quite a big organization by then. I mean, you know that now from your 60s.

[James]

How long did it take you to

[John Caldwell]

get to 50 employees? That took two years. So it took me two years to get to the first 50 employees. We were on target to make a million pounds profit that year on a 13 million turnover. And my biggest supplier, Motorola, supplied 95% of my sales. Wasn't by choice because I have a 10% rule which I'll come back to later, but it wasn't by choice, it was by necessity because they had 90 odd percent of the market in the UK and worldwide actually. So they were my main supplier, really my only critical supplier. And one day the general manager of Motorola came to see me and he said, you know, I don't think there's room for you in this marketplace. He said, if anybody was going to be doing what you were doing, I think it would be me. And I thought from that that Motorola meant that they were going to think about taking distribution off me and doing it themselves anyway. Lo and behold, they did Cancel My contract. 95% of my business gone just like that, bang, overnight because they stopped my supply. If you lose 95% of your business when you're only on probably 5% margin, you've got nothing left to pay. Anything. It doesn't, you know, it's terminal anyway. The second part of that story is that he didn't do it as Motorola. He resigned from Motorola and set up his own business with my contract, supply contract. So he became a competitor of mine, having left Motorola with my contract in place. Anyway, that was really, really a tough few sleepless nights, but I found a solution because I went to one or two of the service providers, which was a model in the UK where service providers sold the airtime on behalf of the airtime network providers and they always got a good deal from Motorola on product. So I did a secret deal with them and said, look, I'll put my volume onto your volume. They didn't know I'd been sacked by Motorola, by the way, I'll put my volume onto your volume. You'll get even bigger discounts. We'll keep it quiet for Motorola. They'll never know. And you supply me with the equipment. And they did and I got even cheaper prices and I bailed myself out of trouble within about two weeks. And then I nurtured Nokia, who were going to be the new kids on the block, who had got one or two phones coming out that I thought were going to be real successful. And I nurtured those people to kill Motorola. And we took Nokia's market share after that from 1% to 21%. And Motorola started diving down and they, of course, really failed in a big way, not just in the UK, but worldwide.

[Jack]

John, your business was losing £2,000amonth when you first started, and then fast forward even later, you had trouble with your top manufacturer that was supplying 95% of your business. How did you. What was the vision for you like, in order to persist through those moments? Like most people, if they looked at you from the outside, they'd be like, your business is losing £2,000amonth. You're crazy. What for you was the vision in starting that company and got you through those persistent hard times?

[John Caldwell]

Well, the 2000. The £2000amonth loss. I always knew mobile phones was going to be big, not like it is. I mean, in those days, nobody wanted a mobile phone. But I just thought, I went back to my childhood when nobody had a home telephone. When I was born, nobody had a home telephone. If you had a home telephone, you're extraordinary. 10, 15, 20 years later, when I was in my teens, everybody had a home telephone. I thought, well, why wouldn't you have a hand device that puts you in contact? I mean, it sounds ridiculous saying this to your audience now, doesn't it?

[Jack]

But this is the 80s.

[John Caldwell]

But then, then it was visionary, really, because I just thought, well, why wouldn't everybody have a mobile phone? And they were incredibly expensive. So I knew I could turn the business into something. I just had to persevere. And as I say, the luck was when my employees all went, I took over the mobile phone business personally and saw arbitrage opportunities where I could make a lot of money.

[Jack]

What were those changes that you made initially when you stepped in?

[John Caldwell]

Well, the first arbitrage opportunity, and there was hundreds over the years, thousands probably. But the first one was that Motorola sold to the service providers. They sold to the service providers at a cheaper price than me, but there was a shortage of these handsets. They were the big bag phones. You won't remember those, but they were called a Motorola Transportable, a great big lump that made one arm longer than the other as you carried it round, and everybody wanted them and they were in short supply. So what they did, because I was paying about 50 pounds a unit more than the service providers, I could get as many as I wanted to, and all they did was stop the service provider's supply and sold to me. So I went to the service providers and said, look, I can supply you the phones, they're going to be £50 more than you're paying, but that enables you to win the connections for the network, which were worth about £1,000 piece at the time. So they paid £50 for the phone, but enabled them to get connections. So they were willing to buy them from me. So I'm buying them from Motorola, huge quantities at £50 too much. Selling them to them at that same price, but working for retrospective discount of 4%. And after just one month, that came to 20,000 profit. And on and on it went. I just kept spotting arbitrage opportunities like that where I could create volume, create wealth out of gaps in the market.

[Josh]

One of the things that I love that you said is even though the contract may have ended, you still found a way to make it work. You. And another thing is that you realize that I can't build this thing myself. I have to get access to great people and people who are more experienced than me in order for me to grow this thing. One of the things I love, and it's a person that I admire, is Steven Bartlett, and he's all about building a team and putting the right people in place. Is there ever a length at which you went to to get the person that you needed for a particular role? Maybe it's ahead of retail or ahead of operations. Did you ever go to extreme lengths to get a particular piece of talent that you feel like you knew you needed to grow the Company.

[John Caldwell]

Well, I don't know what you mean by extreme lengths, but we put huge adverts and with huge salaries and we got massive applicants. We'd get probably a thousand applicants. This was in the days before. It's like, no, you know, this was when the Sunday Times out of big newspapers, you put a big advert in, half a page advert with a. With a big advertorial in there. And we'd get a thousand applicants. The thousand applicants. This was probably typically for either a managing director of one of my businesses or a sales director. And we get 1,000 applicants. And the HR company that I just talked about, the recruitment company, would sift through all of those. The thousand would go down to 50, the 50 would get interviewed by them, and that could take it down to 10. The 10 would get interviewed again by the managing director of one of my other businesses. And we get down to about three. Three used to come in front of me. This gives you an idea of the scale and difficulty of the people we want. The thousand came down to three in front of me. Of those three, one in three might get the job. Might only might get the job. And that one person had got a. About a 30% chance of succeeding. So if you follow the maths through there, I needed about 3,000 applicants to get a successful person. And I didn't know the successful people were until I put them in the role and saw how they performed and drove them. I mean, it was. It sounds ridiculous, but it was an incredibly competitive cutthroat business. It was ferocious. It was a bit like the Wild west, to be honest. It was really ferocious and everybody was attacking you from every angle. And you heard that when I talked about Motorola, you know, did I worry about my customers? Not much. I mean, I fought for my customers like mad. Did I think, worry about my competitors? No, because I could beat them all. What I couldn't do was beat my suppliers who had got complete control over me and who I had to woo and keep happy. I had to give them the right level of volume. But then if I gave them too much volume, became too powerful, they wanted to clip me, which is what Motorola did.

[Jack]

You had started with a couple employees in this business, and then over the course of a couple years, you grew it to over 10,000. And even just you said that you would need 3,000 applicants just to find maybe one successful person. What were some of those things that you would look for in somebody that applied for these roles that you were just like, hey, this is the person I'm Going to give that chance to. What were some of those maybe harder soft skills that that person possessed that when you had that face to face interview with them, you were like, okay, this is the person. I'm gonna give a shot.

[John Caldwell]

There was a whole series of things, but I was looking for somebody that was extremely ambitious, extremely driven, passionate. A lot of commercial intellect. And that's difficult to test. Actually. It's really difficult to test commercial intellect. It's a rare form of intelligence and it is a rare form of intelligence. The people that go to Oxbridge or Harvard, they might be very smart, but they may not actually have that commercial intellect.

[James]

Say like street smarts, sort of.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah. Looking at arbitrage and opportunities and how you can sort of create wealth.

[Jack]

They're not greasy enough.

[John Caldwell]

I'm not sure I like the term greasy, to be honest. It might be okay as an Americanism, but it means that feels.

[James]

I got, I got, I got you.

[John Caldwell]

For me as a Brit, that feels a bit too.

[Jack]

For sure, yeah. Greasy in the good way. In a good way. They.

[James]

They see the edge is greasy ever.

[John Caldwell]

In a good way.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[John Caldwell]

But I don't know the word but. But it, it's just smart enough. Yeah. Street. It's not just street savvy. Street savvy's market trader. Ish. You know, it's way more than that. It's having a real brain that is a genius brain in commercial intellect rather than a genius brain in English or history or computer sciences. It's a different type of brain. And I think you definitely either sort of born with it or you're not. And if you're born with it, that's not the end of the story. You can grow it massively and if you're not born with it, it's not the end of the story. You can grow it, but. But you'll never be like that guy that was born with it. And if I give you a simple example of that, because this is not politically correct and any of your new listeners who are trying to make a living for themselves and do well, they won't like me saying this, but it's absolutely true. You know, you can only have so many winners in life that really win at the very, very, very top level. So if you look at the. The World Sprint champion, he was born to be World Sprint champion, then he had to work like mad. Could I have been a World Sprint champion, you know, I'd have been probably about seven. How many? Seven billion. I might have been in the top 100,000 out of eight billion. You know, you've got to be born to these talents like music and whatever it is. You need DNA, talent. But you can grow that talent, but if you haven't got it, you can still be very successful. It's just that you're not going to shoot the lights out. Generally.

[James]

This business that you were running that you eventually sold for, you know, over a billion pounds, you mentioned 4 or 5% margin.

[John Caldwell]

Well, in some parts of the business I was working for a 1% margin. In others it was more.

[James]

John, that terrifies me. But did you just know that if I did so much volume.

[John Caldwell]

Exactly.

[James]

And so you never really worried about that?

[John Caldwell]

I did worry about it, but there was only so much I could do about it. And I was working all the time on quality of earnings. It was one of the reasons I set up retail, because retail was much higher margins but much higher risk. I ended up opening 300 stores, 300 shops in prime locations in a five year period. Some weeks I was opening three or four stores a week. They all had 50 to 100,000 pounds each invested in the infrastructure, then all the staff, all the staff training, all the marketing. But it was much higher margin, if you got it right. So in the retail, the margins were much better, but the wholesale distribution, which is where I started out, was down, sometimes as low as 1%.

[James]

What was the revenue multiple when you sold your company?

[John Caldwell]

About nine.

[James]

Nine?

[John Caldwell]

Yeah. Not very good. Not very good, you know, I mean, on a high tech business, which we were sort of high tech, certainly at the forefront of technology, from, not from a developmental point of view, but from a commercial point of view, you'd expect a much higher multiple. But when we sold, everybody knew the mobile phone business was vulnerable because you'd got very few suppliers and those suppliers could manipulate you. And they did all the time. We got manipulated and it was a, it was a, it was a chess game, you know, and they'd move the pawn forward that stage and I'd bring the queen out, you know, and it was that, that sort of constant battle of trying to be five or six moves ahead of the, of the suppliers. And it's all about supplier relationships, the manufacturers and the networks.

[James]

When you sold your company in 2006, how much money did you pay in taxes that year?

[John Caldwell]

Well, I'm not sure it was that year, but within two or three years I'd paid about 2 or 300 million. Over a few years I paid, I think the number, it's tailed off recently because of course I've not sold a business yet.

[James]

But you have. You had the opportunity, though, to leave the UK and not pay those taxes.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah, I could have run off to Monaco or somewhere and had a good life cycling around the mountains and the Alps, which is one of my passions.

[James]

Why didn't you do that?

[John Caldwell]

It's more of a complex answer than you might think. Because it was partly out of patriotism, partly out of humanitarianism, and it was partly out of obligation. And when you put all that together, I felt, you know, people ought to pay the taxes in the country that they've made the money in. The people, the poorer members of society need that. Need that money. And I always had this humanitarian dream to be. To make the world a better place. So how could I justify making the world a better place if I run off to Monaco to avoid paying any tax? Now, I could have donated that money to charity, of course, saved the tax and donated the money to charity. But I'd already decided that I was going to put in my will a 70% pledge to leave 70% of my money to charitable causes. So I'd already decided that. And at the end of the day, the governments, all governments, need the money. Now, I know most billionaires won't think like me, but why not?

[James]

Why not? Why won't they?

[John Caldwell]

Why not? Because, well, they're greedy. And I know you said earlier on to me that you felt that rich people value philanthropic. It's not particularly my experience, to be honest. The less rich people tend to be more philanthropic people that, you know, maybe they've made a bit of money, but guys like yourselves, you know, they tend to be more philanthropic than the wealthy people, because the wealthy people seem to want to make 200 billion, then 300 billion, and then 500 billion.

[Josh]

Do you feel like they become out of touch and with reality?

[John Caldwell]

I don't know what it is. Who knows? I don't know. I mean, I spend a lot of my time trying to influence people to be charitable.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[John Caldwell]

And to pay the taxes. And they think I'm crazy when I say pay the taxes. You know, they do. And I get that. I get that. But you know, what. What do you want as a legacy if you're a billionaire? I mean, I've often in the past said Jeff Bezos could give, could give, do the giving pledge, pledge 99% of his wealth to charity. It'd be a world hero, and he'd still be three times as rich as me. And I think, and what are you going to do with that, all that money?

[James]

I know that you recently committed Michael Dell for giving. I know he gave a substantial amount of money for that fund to help people kind of get their investment accounts started.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah.

[James]

So you'd like to see more of that in the world.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah, but not quite that way. I thought that was a bit naive. I don't know whether you saw the comments I made, but I thought it was extremely generous. So we need that sort of action all the time. But it ought to be more targeted and more usefully applied because there's people out there that desperately need the help, desperately. Like the charities that I do, you know, with Caldwell Youth and Caldwell Children.

[Josh]

One of the. One of the things I'm curious about is a lot of people have this goal of eventually selling their business one day, but when it actually happens, a lot of people have. They lose a sense of the self and identity. When you sold your company, did you feel like you lost who you were as a person?

[John Caldwell]

It's a very good question, because I panicked initially over that very same possibility. Because we were spending about 50 million a year on TV advertising. I was synonymous with mobile phones. I was the most famous mobile phone person in the uk. I was very, very widely recognized. And I felt to an extent that that business, which had grown from nothing, was my baby, but my. Also my identity. And it had now grown up into an adult, which gave me even more identity, and yet I was going to sell it.

[Josh]

Why did you want to sell?

[John Caldwell]

Well, there's a lot of reasons for that. The mobile phone business was really reaching maturity. I hadn't fulfilled my childhood dream of the charitable. Simple side. I'd done some charity work, but not much, and I wanted to do a lot more charity work and I wanted to spend more time on fun and family. So there's multiple reasons, but I also visualized that I could run that business maybe for the next five or ten years and maybe the value not increase very much because of consolidation in the marketplace, you know, and timing is very important in any business because if you haven't got a way of evolving it into something that's got a really exciting future and it is being consolidated, which the mobile phone business was. It was saturated. Their service providers needed to find ways of taking cost out. So there's a lot of reasons why the mobile phone business wasn't going to prosper. And then, in addition to that, I forecast a massive UK recession because there was a bubble burden that was going to burst. Funnily enough, it wasn't the uk, it was the world. With the financial crisis, it happened later than I thought, and it happened on a worldwide basis because of all the manipulation by the financial institutes that caused this great big crash in 2008.

[James]

John, you know what fascinates me about you is that this idea, and it's become, I feel like a recurrent theme in some of our interviews and podcasts, is trying to really get to the root of whether, you know, money changes people, right, or if it amplifies who they truly are. And we're seeing in your, you know, recent years after selling your company, how incredibly charitable you're being. Like you said, you've got it kind of in the wheel when it's all said and done to give 70% of your money away. But when you were a young kid, you one day envisioned of, I think you could share it best of one day having the Rolls Royce and going around kind of giving money out to poor people.

[John Caldwell]

Well, you know, it was really for. It ended up being for me, a poison chalice, a Damocles sword. But when I was about seven years old, I had a dream, and that dream was to be chauffeur driven in a Rolls Royce, sitting in the back seat and giving five pound notes out to poor people in the streets of the area which I grew up in, which was very poor. You know, there's a lot of poor people. And that sort of was by vision at the time, which I sort of subsequently realized that the Rolls Royce represented being successful and, and, and wealthy. And the five pound notes out to poor people were, was the charitable aspect. So it was a very precocious dream to have as a youngster. I don't know where it came from. I don't understand it. But then it sat with me all the way through my teenage years. How was I ever going to find fulfill this dream? And it sat with me for a long time because it wasn't until in my 30s that I started making any significant money.

[Jack]

John, obviously charity and philanthropy is massive for you. What do you see as like, the biggest problems that people are facing that wealthy people could be helping more with?

[John Caldwell]

Well, there's endless causes, really. I mean, the ones I've chosen are children, because children have had no life, you know, and so ill children, which is Cordwell children. And we help anybody with any illness or disability whatsoever. And the only qualifier is that they can't get the help with the health service through the government or through any other charity. So everybody with any illness whatsoever, we help them. In Caldwell Children, Caldwell Youth is one I founded only three years ago now, and we Help kids that are vulnerable. So they're highlighted by social services to be vulnerable maybe to sexual trafficking, to criminality, to drug abuse or parental abuse. And we put a one on one mentor with them. The volunteers. The mentors are volunteers. We train them up and they build a relationship with that young person so that when the young person's got any temptation or worries or concerns, they've got somebody to go to and that mentor takes them out once a week to go 10 pin bowling or the cinema or whatever to build that relationship with them. And in a lot of cases, these young people, it's the only person they've got in their lives that is a decent person with, with the correct thoughts and that they can rely upon to do, to help them and to give them good advice. And the success rate is unbelievable because of those that were likely to be repeat criminals, 93% don't go on to repeat. So that's a phenomenal success rate. It's only a small charity at the moment. We're only helping this year, about 400 kids. I think there's about a hundred thousand need helping. But if we can do that, we can transform society. If we can grow it to help 100,000 kids a year, crime will be reduced at the most phenomenal rate and it will transform society. So I find that incredibly exciting.

[James]

John, one of the things that fascinates me whenever I'm interviewing people and I'm just super curious about it from your perspective is you did business in the UK, you made billions of dollars in the UK. We grew up in the Washington D.C. area and, you know, just growing up in that environment, I always like to notice how businesses, business is done there, right in the dc. It's very much transactional. It's very much, hey, what can you do for me? Who do you know that I can know? We've done several engagements out, several, you know, I guess collaborations out in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Dubai. They're extremely hospitable. They value the relationship. They want to get to know you. What would you say? What is it like doing business in the uk? The UK for, you know, people that don't know. Like, how does business really get done out there?

[John Caldwell]

Well, you've just painted two extremes there. I would say the UK is somewhere in the middle of that. It's not absolutely transactional at all. I mean, that sounds way too, way too cold and ruthless and calculated. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, I mean, you do one favor for somebody and they do something back. There's Nothing particularly wrong with that, but I would say the UK's a much warmer culture than that. But not by the sound of it, to the same degree that you've experienced in the Middle east.

[James]

And you're 73 today?

[John Caldwell]

Not today. No, no, no. The reason you say 73 today, because I said I was 72 and they said, no, you got your age wrong, you're 73. But it wasn't today. It was October 7th.

[James]

But you are 73.

[John Caldwell]

No, I am 73.

[James]

I was more so saying that.

[John Caldwell]

Oh, as I said here, I'm 73.

[James]

What are you getting ready to. To go do?

[John Caldwell]

Oh, the. The atap, which is a stage of the Tour de France, which most of your people heard of that it's the world's most famous cycle race through the Alps. Huge. It's huge in France. I'm doing a stage of the Tour de France, which is when they open it up to the public. So it's exactly what the professional riders do. And this is the most horrendous challenge of my life, because 18,000ft of climb and 110 miles. 110 miles is nothing, but the 18,000ft of climb is not nothing. So it's. This is.

[James]

You're seven. This is not normal. I mean.

[John Caldwell]

I mean, well, I. I don't think I am normal.

[James]

Was health always something that you put an emphasis on, like when you were building your company?

[John Caldwell]

No, I put, you know, the only thing that mattered to me was success and I would have killed myself being successful. Sure. And probably nearly did, actually. Working way too many hours and being stressed and. Yeah, I mean, I. The success was the number one thing when I gained the success. Of course, you start thinking about your health, especially because my dad had a stroke when he was 48, and you start thinking about, you know, well, I've got to actually do something about my health. So I became very health conscious in my 40s, started cycling a lot, changed my diet, improved my diet dramatically. I'm very much into diet and into all forms of nutritional benefits to the body. So I'm really into all of that to try and preserve myself, and especially having two young kids, you know, three and five. I don't need to be passing away in the next year or two. If I can help, I might do that. On the Tour de France, actually, you

[Josh]

have won the financial game. You sold a company for over a billion dollars. And a lot of people have a similar goal, to be, of course, just financially free, but also have aspirations of making multiple millions, even billions of dollars. Is there something you learned along your journey that you would pass down to someone who shares those same aspirations, that maybe you learned after reaching that goal that, you know, maybe it wasn't all what it came out to be, or. I wish I knew this one thing.

[John Caldwell]

No, not. Not really. Because, you know, creating wealth is a wonderful thing to do, but it's incredibly demanding, and attention to detail is absolutely vital. Trying to recruit people that are much better than you are at various disciplines, that's vital. It's all sort of a crucial part of growing a business, but it's not the be all and end all. And I said to you earlier on that for my children, I've brought them up with just two requirements or hopes from my point of view. One is that they are happy in their lives, and the second is that they leave a world a better place than they found it. And if they do that, I've succeeded massively as a father. If they go on to do other things, like my partner was an Olympian, one of the top female races in the world, if they go on to do something like that, that's amazing. That's fantastic. But for me, that is the third part of real success.

[Josh]

One of the things I think is really interesting about what you just said is you said as you were coming up, all that mattered to you was just being successful. You didn't care what it costs, even if it costs your health. All that matters is becoming successful. But when you raise your kids today, the metric for success is happiness. What are the things that you're teaching your kids that are different from what you grew up learning?

[John Caldwell]

Well, I think. I think the thing is that, you know, your children will go down their own route no matter what. And what I wanted to do is take the pressure off them, because how do you compete with your billionaire father? How do you do that? You know, it's. There's very few kids that could start from scratch and do what I've done. You know, it's a very, very rare thing to do. And so I wanted to take the pressure off, though, off my children to not have to think they've got to compete with me, not they. They've got their own lives and they can be great human beings in their own way and do their own thing. So one of my daughter, for instance, is a psychotherapist. It's something she's always wanted to do to help people. She'll never make a lot of money on it, but that doesn't matter. And that provides her with happiness and Contentment. But if one of my children and up to you, I haven't really seen it. If they were really hungry to be successful, then nothing I say about being happy and leaving the world a better place is going to stop them chasing that success. What it might though do is mean that if they made a lot of money, they'd go down the charitable route like I have. So, you know, all of those messages go in, but it was about taking the pressure off them as well.

[Jack]

You've been involved in a number of real estate projects and investing into several startups. When you're looking to make an investment, whether it's real estate or into a startup, what are some of those things that you're looking for when you're, hey, I'm ready to, I'm going to make this play, I'm going to distribute my wealth here. What do you look at when you're looking at a particular investment?

[John Caldwell]

Well, if it's investing in another person, it would be the person that themselves and how much money they put in. So wanting somebody to put to have their skin really heavily committed to the business so there's no escape route for them and then I put my money in alongside that and hope that they've got the ability to make it pay. But if it's my own business, for instance, like the property businesses, it was all about location. So the two locations that I have, the two main locations are the best in the world for their area. So one is on Cap d', Antibes, which is the Provencal building, which I've renovated into 40 luxury apartments, and the other one is in 1 Mayfair, which is right in the heart of Mayfair. And that's going to be, and I billed this as the world's most prestigious apartment block. So I've put my credibility totally on the line because although that's a subjective assessment, you've still got to have the credibility of when it's finished. People saying, can't really argue with that. You know, maybe such and such is better or maybe not, but it's debatable. It's damn close and it's so close that they can't say it isn't. And that's my goal with that. And what we've done there is extraordinary. It's going to be phenomenal. It'll be finished early next year and I do think I'll pretty much achieve the objective. There might be places in the Middle east that have got way more gold leaf or way more of this, but I don't think there's going to be anywhere in the world that's as prestigious in such a great location or so tastefully done, but that'll be for the public to decide, not me. But I've put my head above the parapet and said I am aiming to build the world's most prestigious apartment.

[James]

So it's pretty safe to say that I'll be able to go find some billionaires out there to interview then?

[John Caldwell]

Oh, absolutely, yeah. If they're not billionaires, they won't be able to afford.

[James]

Wow, that's amazing. So I want to ask about that. I think the total. Was it, what, $200 million for that Mayfair kind of block that you had bought and are building out there, or what was the total purchase price of that piece of real estate?

[John Caldwell]

Well, the development cost is well over a billion in total and the GDV, the gross development value is somewhere around 2 billion. So, you know, if. I mean, the market is not great at the moment worldwide, you know, here in la, it's in trouble. It's not very good worldwide. And I think that's partly because the geopolitics around the world, the wars and so on and so. And in the uk, of course, we've had some headwinds from the Labour government, so there's all sorts of reasons why things are sort of tough. But I do expect when we launch next year, that sales will be quite buoyant because it's unique, one of a kind.

[James]

And your dad was a travel salesman?

[John Caldwell]

He was a traveling salesman. Technical salesman, actually.

[James]

Are you a good salesman yourself?

[John Caldwell]

I think to achieve what you've achieved, you have to be. Yeah, you have to be really.

[James]

What did you learn?

[John Caldwell]

I think we all are. I think you guys are good salesmen. You know, if you're going to grow a business, you've got to have sales, because sales really is just about relating to people in a way that make them want to buy whatever you're selling through your ethics, your morality, your credibility, likeability.

[James]

But you found that the most important principle in sales was actually just telling the truth.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah.

[James]

Why is that?

[John Caldwell]

Well, I've sort of. I think you've got to be a little bit careful about appearing too puritanical in that question. You've got to always tell the truth. You can't ever be caught out in a lie because your credibility is shot to bits. The sort of absolute truth. And there's sort of maybe, maybe to a small extent, not highlighting things. Most salesmen fall into the category of either lying or not highlighting things. What I decided to do with Mobile phones was tell it absolutely the way it was, partly because I find it very difficult to lie. I just don't like liars. It was another edict for my children. Tell me a lie and the punishment will be horrendous. Tell me the truth, no matter what you've done, and you'll probably get away with it. I couldn't stand lies at all. So when somebody used to come in and I was the salesman in those early days and ask about a mobile phone and they used to say, well, how does it perform? And so they're absolutely awful. They're abysmal. I mean, they're still abysmal today, but they're a lot less abysmal than they were. And I said, there'll be times you just want to smash it on the floor because you're so fed up with it. People think it's crazy when you talk like that, but they'd say to me, well, I went down to the shop down the road and they told me it was great. It was just like my home telephone. I said, that's nonsense. That's complete nonsense. I said, I guarantee you, you will have times when you want to break that phone, when it's so frustrating that it really annoys you. I said, but that said, it's an amazing device. It'll keep you in touch. It's great for emergencies, it's great for business. And if you want a mobile phone or if you need one, then just put up with the problems. And I never got a complaint, ever. And I never lost a sale.

[Josh]

You never had to remember what you said if you told the truth.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah, exactly. But I've got a lousy memory, so it's got to be the truth.

[Josh]

It's got to be the truth.

[John Caldwell]

It's got to be the truth.

[Josh]

You know, one thing that you said that honestly just fascinates me is this new development you're doing is billions of dollars. And I'm starting to think, like, are you addicted to risk because you've made billions through your career. And I'm just curious, like, why most people would just be in wealth preservation mode, but you're like, I can't get out of the game. And it's a different game, albeit. But why? Why can.

[Jack]

Well, did you. Did you raise.

[John Caldwell]

It's a good.

[Jack]

Bring in outside investors. No. Wow.

[John Caldwell]

It's a good question that is. And I think the answer is twofold. One is, I never, ever wanted to go into business again just for the sake of business, not for the sake of making money. I Wanted to be creative. So the Provence Allen Cap d' Antibes is an old derelict hotel that we've turned into this absolute phenomenal. Have a look on the website, have a look at Le Provence Salon Cap d'. Antibes. It's beautiful. Have a look at one Mayfair. They're works of art. They really are truly works of art. So I wanted to be creative, I wanted to make money as well, but the creativity and, and the heritage was more important. So that, that was absolutely, utterly vital to me. But I am also a bit of an addict. You know, it's. I, I can liken myself a bit to maybe like a addict. You know, they have a quick shot and, oh, you know, the world, it's

[Josh]

something in the DNA.

[John Caldwell]

The world's a wonderful place and then you suffer and you suffer afterwards till your next shot. And I've always been a deal maker. I've always been a deal maker and I sort of can't resist it, really.

[Josh]

You probably can't even. Because I, I look at it right, and I don't have any kids, but I have nieces and nephews. And even if I play a game with them, whether it's, you know, throwing the ball or I'm playing a board game, I have to win. Yeah, I can't. Like, I'm playing Monopoly, I'm playing to win everything I do. And I just think it's hilarious how even if you know you're, you're going to do with the cycling, you're not, you're not going to go do the local trail. I'm sure maybe you do that around your house, but you want to go do the Tour de France, you know, you want to, you want to do the top of the top. And so that's what I find is, is just interesting is that that DNA of being that top 1% doesn't just apply to business, it applies to every aspect of your life.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah, I am, I am very much. My mentality is very much about trying to achieve perfection in business. That might not be perfection, it might be commercial perfection, because you can go too far on the perfection level and price yourself out of the marketplace. But I just love achieving the very best result that can ever be achieved. And if I can't do that, I don't really want to do it. I could have made a lot more money doing student accommodation. I could have built great big high rises in Manchester where there's a big university. Most of them are Chinese coming over. I could have built these apartment blocks, made a fortune. But there Wouldn't have been much pride in it. It would have just been commercialism. Whereas one Mayfair I'll be proud of for the rest of my life, and so will my family.

[James]

John, we end these podcasts off with two questions for our guest. I'll start and Jack will finish it. John, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more message to leave with the younger generation, what would that be?

[John Caldwell]

It would be what I've already said, really, which is, be humanitarian, look after your fellow man.

[James]

But how do you stay so grounded? I've spent the last two hours, you know, with you. I've been around so many people. You're so grounded, like, it's incredible.

[John Caldwell]

How do you have that genetic. I was born a pauper. I've still got a pauper's mind. I've got a porpoise mind. But I'm surrounded in luxury, you know, but the luxury doesn't seduce me. Another question to ask me is, how would you feel if you lost all your money? And I'll give you the answer because. And people think this is the wrong answer. They don't believe me. And I don't can't say for sure that this is genuine, but I don't think I'd be very bothered other than the pride situation. As long as I got my bike and as long as I got my health and I go cycling through the Alps paying €30 a night for bed and breakfast somewhere and be very, very happy. Now, that might not be true, but it's the way I feel. I don't feel I need my super yacht. I don't feel I need the best house in London. I really don't feel I need them. I turn them into businesses. The house. We do lots of charity events in my home in London and raise a lot of money for charity in them. The yacht is a business that is charted out all the time and contributes to my 70% pledge. I don't feel I need them. I like them, but I don't feel I need them. Not like I need my bike and I need my health. That's what I really need.

[Jack]

And, John, if it was all said and done tomorrow, how would you want to be remembered?

[John Caldwell]

Well, journalists used to ask me that all the time, you know, and I originally said, here lies Britain's most successful businessman. And when I'd said that a few times and I'd moved a few years down the line, I started thinking how hollow that sounds. I thought, so what? There's millions of successful businessmen. What does it really mean? What does it really mean to be wealthy? What's money if you don't do something with it that changes lives? What is money? So it changed to, yes, I want to be recognized as a businessman because I gave my life to it and I was very successful. But I'd much rather be remembered for somebody who helped in a small way to change the world in whatever way I can. And it is small relative to what needs doing in the world. But I can do more than the average person can do. And that's why I'm so committed to it, because that's what I need to do.

[James]

I love it. John, this was an incredible episode and just the advice from start to finish was genuinely amazing. I want to thank you for being here.

[John Caldwell]

It's been a great pleasure. Good to meet you guys.

[James]

For everybody watching right now, be sure to like and subscribe to the School of Hard Knocks podcast because every week we are bringing the most incredible business owners, entrepreneurs, millionaires, billionaires from all over the world. Just like John Caldwell right here. Okay, John, we're going to put the links to your social media in the description. Any last words for them that they need to be aware of, any events, anything going on other than for the billionaires watching, we're going to get them ready to.

[John Caldwell]

Yeah, well, for the billionaires watching, please pay your taxes, please give more to charity, help me to do the work that I'm doing with Caldwell Youth in America or, or wherever. But, you know, be good humans, be humanitarian, make the world a better place. I think the spiritual satisfaction that you will get if you've not done it before, the spiritual satisfaction out of helping other people, seeing lives that you've really rescued and changed will be way better than a Chanel handbag or a super yacht. That is my belief, and I hope you find that, too.

[James]

I love it. Lastly, everyone, we're going to put the link down in the description to join the School of Mentors, which is the number one most powerful entrepreneur, community and network in the entire world that we, the founders of the School of Hard Knocks, launched to give you direct access to the millionaires and billionaires that we interview on this channel, where you can ask your specific questions directly to them and they mentor you on these live calls. So we can't wait to see you on the inside. With that being said, we'll see you in the next episode.