“I mean I do my best. I come in. I put my head down. I work one day at a time, and try to help people. I try to help younger people. That’s one of the things I really feel strongly about. But, now, I’m getting ready to pop off one of these days, so I like to be able to just give them a phrase that might help them later on in their careers or in their lives.”
Caldwell, now 78, cherishes his intern program, where he tries to teach the next generation to quell their emotions while sticking to the rules and doing the right thing, so things will work out. He also likes to teach the younger people about sales since they’re not taught it elsewhere.
“It’s the most important thing in the world,” said Caldwell. “If you don’t have sales, you don’t have a company. Sales is about communicating an idea of interest to people. Everybody’s in sales.”
He didn’t have connections when he began, but he had a wife, two kids, a dog, and “umpteen mortgages”, he said “and the buck stopped with me, so I had to overcome my fear. So, I really try to help people in sales because I think that’s the most critical function in the free enterprise society.”
Looking back, he remembered being an extremely shy introvert when he started. His dad died when Caldwell was 13, so he didn’t come from money and didn’t know how the business worked or have any of the necessary connections in it. So, he considered his first great accomplishment was getting a job in the investment industry. But, he’d worked in a brokerage office and really wanted to do this mentally challenging work that catered to his wide spectrum of interests.
