John Caudwell Quotes
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I might have made more money if I had outsourced to India, and I knew I'd find it easier to hire senior managers in London. But I wanted to be in Stoke. What could be more satisfying than creating work for 3,000 people in my home town?
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I was only 21 when I bought a five-bedroom detached house in Stoke-on-Trent that was way outside of my financial status in life. I did it by borrowing money from my family and the bank, taking out a huge mortgage.
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Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done.
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Sometimes your worst competitors are the ones which are dying because they do stupid things.
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In the early days, I had everything to prove. A very working class lad with a burning ambition. A very crude way of measuring success is how much you are worth.
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When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.
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The power of fear of failure, with will to win, is an incredible force. I don't think we should be worried about having a fear of failure; I think it's quite natural. If you surveyed any top businessman or any top athlete, I bet if they were truthful, they would all say they've got a fear of losing and a fear of failure.
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My father was unwell when I was 11, had a stroke at 14 and died when I was 18. My mother going to work at seven in the morning and coming back to look after him and me and my brother left its mark on me.
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At the end of the day, if you've got the great idea, and someone judges you've got the managerial capability, you'll probably get the backing for it.
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As the years passed, and I was nine, 10, 11 years old, it became obvious I was going to start up a business of some sort.
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I do want to keep the Wedgewood Collection in place, intact, and open to the public. Selling it off would be a real tragedy.
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Journalists like to say I started off sweeping the pottery floors. But it was just a short-lived part time job doing that after I left school.
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I considered several names, but Titania, a character from Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', was best able to portray the image I wanted for what is a fantastically elegant and sexy yacht.
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I realised I've got quite a talent for coming up with ideas for design. I've got so many ideas about fashion.
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Business is about being the best that you can be, and there are always glowing examples of people that we can all learn from.
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E-mails are the cancer of modern business.
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I don't think I'm going to live until I'm 70, no; I could die tomorrow. So there isn't a panic that time is running out, but there is an element that anything could happen.
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In any business opportunity, you'd be looking, probably, primarily at the risk and return. Some business can be very risky with a low return; what you want is the lowest risk with the biggest return.
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If you throw money around like confetti, it just becomes shallow and meaningless.
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My philosophy is very much to encourage my children to forge their own success and happiness, even though that will undoubtedly involve much more modest levels of wealth creation.