Transcription
Becoming a billionaire has nothing to do with luck or talent. It's all about the habits you live by. There are only 152 billionaires in the UK. And John Cordwell is one of them. He turned a tiny phone business into a $4 billion tech empire. Today, he's worth over $3.4 billion. And in this video, he's going to reveal his seven habits to go from nothing to everything. But if you can't sit down, grab a notepad, and listen, I'm sorry, you're probably not going to make it.
What's the first we're gonna learn, John?
Healthy eating and fasting. I'm absolutely passionate about this and everybody should be. Now, let me just give you one bit of information. Within the next 15 years, the entire budget of the national health will be spent on diabetes. Absolute obesity crisis down the road. And it's as a result of all the dreadful food we eat, all the sugar, all the cakes, everything everybody likes actually, all the biscuits. It's not just sugar. It's high carbohydrate foods create obesity. create create visceral fat which is the fat within the organs. It's a big passion of mine to try and make people understand that if you want to live longer and healthier you must take your diet into account and of course alongside that fitness.
Because the fitness and the diet and the healthy lifestyle all go hand in hand. I I just think when people listening to this, I mean, it all makes sense, but of course with the cost of food, like I go into an organic shop. I can afford this stuff. I'm still like, it's crazy expensive to buy food that doesn't have this crap in it.
Well, I'm going to challenge that, Simon. I'm going to challenge that because the healthiest thing on earth you can eat is organic vegetables like Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, um, and, uh, kale, spinach. They are packed full of vitamins and incredibly healthy. It costs nothing to eat those. If you want an organic ribeye steak, yeah, okay. Puts the price up. If you want to go even to McDonald's or whatever, you're spending. I don't think for the vast majority of people there is an excuse to eat rubbish because you can eat really great food much more cheaply. Let's go a stage further. Let's talk about fasting. People are horrified when I say I fast for 5 days. Now, the benefits of fasting are huge, and this is scientifically proven. First of all, after about 48 hours, your body goes into autophagy. And autophagy is the body's ability to take all of the bad cells, including potential cancer cells, out of the body and turn them into glucose. Now, I know most of the listeners to this think it's crazy. Five days, I could never do it.
Try it before you make a judge.
But we can do it. You can do it. And you get less hungry after day one.
How old are you, John?
72.
Honestly, guys, I mean, if you could probably pick up the energy. I I if I've got your energy at 72, you know, they always take advice from people whose life you want. At 72, you've got the energy of someone much much younger.
Adventure mindset. Can you share a little bit about that?
That comes back to adventure in everything. Adventure in business, adventure in life. Once again, I'm quite lucky because I'm I'm not fearful of anything really, only failure.
Right. You still fear failure?
Yeah. Yeah. You know, in anybody's life, all of your listeners should be motivated by a carrot and stick.
The stick up the backside if you don't perform and the carrot if you do perform.
For me, the carrot and stick has always been, well, the carrot is of success and achieving the goals and ambitions I've got. And of course, the the stick is the failure. Which one of any of your listeners wants to be a failure? Nobody wants to be a failure.
Everybody wants that joy of success. Some people fear failure more than others. And I hated the idea of failure. I don't mind failing at some things, you know, but I love adventure. I love adventure all the time. It it's it's almost the elixir of life. And it was the same in business. How can I grow the business through the roof? That's an adventure. I want people to feel what you're telling me here. I want people to feel what you're talking about. Cuz I'd say I sold my business at 40. I retired. Took two years off. I was bored. I came back. This feeling of doing something, this adventure. How old are you now? I'm I'm 51.
Well, you're not doing bad. Are you?
Yeah, I'm doing all right. Yeah, I'm doing I've retrained myself in the Tik Tok world, but like but you're talking about something I want people to feel.
I think today, certainly in business, it's easier to be super wealthy than ever before in history. That's true.
Because you've got all this globalization of media. I had to graphite fury to make my first few,000. To make £10,000 took me eight years. Eight years to make£10,000. admitted it was worth a bit more then in those days but it was still only maybe 6070,000 by today's money and it took me eight years.
Tell us a little bit about how you view the world as far as people is concerned.
You always aim to recruit somebody with a specialism that is better than your own. Now I speak about that as a founder who did every single specialism, everything from finance to marketing sales. So you do everything. You do every mortal thing. And so you you develop a lot of specialism. Some of which you're good at, some of which you're not good at. But even those that you're good at, you'll look for somebody that's better than you. If you're the entrepreneur that created the business, you're probably never going to find anybody better than you that can do everything. But you can definitely find somebody that's better than you at each specialism.
And that's what you have to find. When you've got that person, the difficulty is keeping the feet on the ground, keeping them loyal. And people that work for me, this is not a characteristic that I advocate to your listeners. This is just my characteristic. They used to say, "Do you know I've just built you the most amazing house that I could ever build you, and you have a habit of spotting the one tile on the roof that's just not quite parallel."
That's your skill. That's That's one ultra critical. I try to be fair with it, but I'm ultra critical. When things are really good, people know it, but it has to be really good. I'm never one that says, "Oh, thank you. Well done. Well done. Well done." Because I tell you what happens when you do that. People become complacent and they might like it for a short p space of time but it becomes fasile and meaningless. When I tell people they've done well they rise a thousand feet off in the air because they know they've done well. So part of uh my management style is being very levelheaded about things and very objective and not just praising people for nothing but expecting phenomenal performance because I've always paid very good money and given people a great career with uh Phantom Shares and the business and so on, you know. So they've always been extremely well rewarded. When when you do all that, people get really motivated% and they really want to shoot the lights.
So, flipping it the other way for people listening to I I think there's something really good in like I ask my team every week, how can I be better on what I'm doing? How can I be a better interviewer? How can I inspire people? What can I be doing better at this craft and I love it when they find something that's wrong. That that thing you're talking about that little thing that you've noticed to me that's a chance to improve.
Back to this subject of people. There's nothing more complex. I've managed everybody from the person that needs 90% stick to 10% carrot to the person that needs 100% carrot and no stick. And the carrot actually isn't even motivation or incentive. It's their own pride. The pride is the carrot. And if you try and put a stick in there for that person, they're offended. Even if you put a financial motivation, they're offended. And I think the message to your listeners is that everybody's different. You can subdivide them into various categories, but they're all different. And if you're going to manage your people properly, you've got to understand those categories and what each individual is motivated by and how they receive things. As I'm just discussing with John, one of the things you've got to do is learn to outsource the things you're not good at. Even if you think, for example, that you're a talented graphic designer, you're probably not. Go and find help. Help is how you ensure success. 1 plus 1 equ= 11. You can't do it on your own.
So, I partnered up with Fiverr in this video to give you help. Fiverr is a global platform full of top tier freelancers who specialize in exactly what you need. Web developers, AI pros, designers, marketing experts. They're all here. And this isn't guesswork. Fiverr lets you check detailed portfolios, read reviews, and choose professionals with proven track records. It's quick, focused, and efficient, so you can be sure you're securing the best talent for your projects. Use the link down below which is fiverr.co/simonscriptib and use the code simon25 for 10% off your first project. Let's go. Let's go make your dreams happen.
I know you're very big into philanthropy. And so maybe we can talk about that a little bit. I I I will just say from my side, I I really believe now um for profit for good. Businesses are the future. Business needs to also step up and take a little bit more of a lead. We blame governments and they have a lot to be blamed for for the debt they got us into and the things they don't do. But I also do think that corporations and businesses, people like Starbucks not paying their tax in this country for terrible. We we
Well look at Ireland.
Ireland's made a really prosperous prosperous economy sheltering these international companies from taxation. Companies like Starbucks, they should not want to operate in a country where they make profit without distributing that profit to support the country that makes them successful. About 10 years ago, I somewhat at the time famously asked the whole of society to boycott Apple, Starbucks, the big corporates who were paying at that time almost zero corporation tax anywhere in the world. And meanwhile, you've got these huge, huge tens of billions of pounds being made and people around the world suffering starvation, deprivation, disaster, you know, and it it's so immoral to me. And if they paid that tax, they'd still be super successful. The shareholders would still be phenomenally well.
Well, honestly, they're very customers would be a little wealthier. You you are big into the philanthropy side. You do a lot in that space. So, what's your experience with philanthropy and what's your view on this kind of profit for good model?
I absolutely agree with that. But I think we have to influence people. And if we look at a simple statistic which is that the giving pledge that that was founded as you know by Gates and Buffett and it was founded on the basis that billionaires give 50% of their wealth away during or after the lifetime. There's there's three and a half thousand known billionaires but there's a lot more I think that are unknown yet.
Are they all on your phone? You've got little WhatsApp group.
I wish. Well I wish because I'd be pestering them to join the giving pledge. So there's probably, in my view, just a guess 4 to 5,000 billionaires on the planet. How many of those do you think are in the giving pledge?
I actually don't know if it's going to be low, isn't it?
It is. Yeah.
250.
Right.
Why?
I don't know if they trust anybody else to do anything with the money. Maybe there's an element.
They can do it themselves during or after the lifetime. Or they can leave it to the children, which is what I'm doing. I mean, I'll do as much as I can within my lifetime, but then the children will run the foundation.
With a very clear set of objectives. They'll run the foundation to make other people's lives better.
After I've gone.
Interesting.
Isn't that a much better legacy to leave your children than giving them hundreds of millions of pounds?
What's the next thing people need to learn?
Fitness, as we all know, is vital for lots and lots of reasons. Fitness gives you V2 max if you do it properly. There's a correlation between V2 max and useful life. So if you exercise at huge intensity only maybe twice a week for half an hour each time that increases your V2 max and there's a correlation between V2 max and lifespan and healthy lifespan. And let's face it we might not want to live to be 80 or 90 or 100. I don't know what I want to live to but what I do know is while I'm alive I want to be useful and healthy and able to enjoy the things in life that motivate me. So that's that's one correlation. There's another correlation that's really important. The bigger your waistline and especially as a man, the more likely you are to have heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. And there's a reason for that because a bigger waistline suggests visceral fat. Visceral fat is the fat that sits in your body cavity. So it's under your stomach muscles, not above it. So it's not this loose fat here. It's the fat that sits inside. And that releases toxicity in the body. And that toxicity provides inflammation which makes you more likely to get cancer.
People listening to this, I guess, you know, normally we talk a lot about business and we talk about how to make money, but if you haven't got your health, what's the point?
You can't make money without help. And I and I'm pretty fortunate really because I've been able to work very long hours my entire life. My mental health, it was a little bit of a problem in my teens. Since then, I've had no mental health issues and I am lucky in that way. I'm just quite robust for it. But you've got to be robust. And what you can do to help your mental health for sure is exercise. It releases dopamine. Dopamine feeds the brain with positive neurons. It get it makes you feel better. So everybody really has to find the time to be as healthy as they can from a dietary point of view and from an exercise point of view in order to shoot the lights out in business. Because once you get a health problem, that will slow you down. It'll divert you away from that success that enables you to make the money and succeed.
Change comes from personal desire, right? Agency over your own life. So when you were young, something horrific happened to you. You saw someone you love have this stroke that sat with you and that meant you didn't want to follow the same path, right? My father died of a heart attack in front of me. So I have a similar thing. It's bad luck that we had those experiences, but weirdly it turns into good luck over time.
It does. Every bit of bad luck you have, you can turn into good luck. Because there's a lesson in everything in life. Every time I've had bad luck, my absolute motto is to turn the bad luck into good luck. I had testicular cancer, so I went on the a campaign about that, to tell people about testicular cancer and to try and motivate them to think about the symptoms of it and what to do about it. Whatever you have in life, there's you can usually fix it. Not always, of course. I mean some things just end up being terminal. But we can do so much for ourselves that we owe it to ourselves to do so. Every single person on this planet can be a much better version of themselves just by really wanting to and perhaps being inspired by being inspired by what you're doing with you know what what's your dream. It will leverage people into being inspired and doing something for themselves. I I just want people to because I worry if people hear that you were born with it, they'll think they can't teach themselves it and they'll give up on having agency over their life, right? Because I wasn't born like I am now. I had a pretty middle class upbringing. I didn't have any pain. I wasn't selling lemonade and selling toys at 8. I I wasn't. But at 15, my father died. My mom kicked me out of home. I was homeless. And I I had no choice but to make it work. And I I couldn't get a job. I tried to cuz that's the only thing school teaches you to get, right? A job. And then I went to social services and asked for help and they said, "We've got three single mothers in front of you. If there's accommodation tonight, we'll give it to you, but probably not these three single mothers need." And I was like, "Fair enough. They got a child. They need it." I was a 15year-old man. Because of that, my brain changed and I had to do what you're talking about. And when I say I was lucky because genetically I was born like that. It might make people think that they can't do it. But I I refer back to what I said at the beginning. Everybody be a much better version of what they what they were bound to be. If you take Olympic champions, they were born with that ability. You can't create that out of nothing. So, you've got to have the genetic disposition, but then you've got to have a huge amount of effort and work. And it's the effort and work. You know, there's that old adage, isn't there, that the harder I work, the luckier I get. And it is absolutely true. So, all of your listeners out there, look, the harder you work, the luckier you'll get.
Don't say the risk you take, the luckier you get. to an extent I I give you that but I wouldn't agree with it entirely because you've got to balance the riskreward. Let's say I went out now and I wanted to buy 10 businesses and they were all risky but one of them could make a 100x and one of them was almost bound to succeed. Now buy 10 and nine fail but the one makes 100x. That's a calculated riskreward equation. Too many people take risks that are not likely to pay off. and I'd take one or two of those, but it always in in relationship to my overall wealth. We have to take some risks to do the things. But then it has to be riskreward adjusted.
Well, again, that that that is a skill you can fine-tune as well. But I I think again luck is to me something like I see luck in people when they're persistent, when they have a clear direction of where they're going, and when they take risk. Those three things together, that's when you hack luck. So I think luck isn't as as simple as you take take just the working hard piece.
Radical thinking and no excuses mentality. Let's just talk about those two things to close off. What's your view on those things?
Radical thinking well of course that's thinking outside the box and people all the way through my business career have come to me with issues that well this is what's happening so we need to do this this and this. And always I would say just a minute why are we doing this to begin with?
Why are we doing this that you need to do this this and this to fix it? Do we need to do it at all? I'll give you an example of that. Um emails uh famously 20 years ago I banned emails entirely from my whole business. There were thousands and I banned.
Years of people's lives have you saved?
Banned it totally. I did a lot of other things at the same time that were very radical but all my board of directors said we can't do that. It' be a catastrophe. How are we going to leers with the shop managers? How are we going to leaz with the area managers, the directors, the area directors and so on? I said, we're a mobile phone business. We pick up the phone and we speak. We don't.
I wish that caught on cuz I have responded and been involved in a lot of emails I didn't need to get.
Yeah. So I wish that had become a real that that should have been like a.
Well you know I even had I even had footsy companies the chairman ringing me up trying to get in touch with me to see did I think it would work banning emails on a Wednesday afternoon.
I thought oh my god you know this is a culture thing it look it either works for you or it doesn't you know if you're one man bandon architect or whatever liazing by email all the time with drawings and stuff of course it won't work. We're in my business. We're a communications company that's talking to people and driving and motivating. My shop manager was spending 5 hours a day answering emails.
Wow.
And they were all proliferating. They were all copies of copies of copies of copies.
Everyone's CC's will never think.
It was madness. And as a result, they never sold a phone. That was radical. Nobody agreed with it at all. You don't want to keep things in place in business that are not providing benefit. Everything you look at should be well, do I need that? Do I need that process? Do I need that step? Can I get rid of it? And another thing I used to indoctrinate people with, and this this is going to sound counterintuitive until I've explained it, which is change is the death of business and lack of change is the death of business. And what I meant by that is a lot of managers, especially a new ones coming in, will want to make change to put their stamp of authority on the business. Most of the time they make these changes and they're counterproductive because it's a change that probably delivers either none none or very little value but there's a negative value because every time you make a change all your employees have to try and adapt to that new change understand it not make mistakes. So we don't make changes for changes sake. We don't make changes unless they're quantum. But we have to make change. We have to evolve. We have to make change. But every time we make a change, it's got to be a quantum leap forward that we can train every person in the business to understand and to adopt that change. And it will be a guaranteed leap forward.
Thank you so much for your time. Everybody should buy your book. It's brilliant. Plus, I think it's amazing. All the profit from this book goes towards supporting the charities that you support. We're off to have some chicken now, guys. Go subscribe. I see it.