The Wall Street Executive Who Had Everything—Except Peace

James “Jet” Davies1:23

Yeah. I think the one part about that story you missed is I spent three years on one segment trying to beat your time.

You're too polite to mention that.

James “Jet” Davies1:43

Yeah, I ran a bit. I didn't run in college. I ran a bit at high school, but I was never I was okay at running.

James “Jet” Davies1:59

Yeah. And then you picked me up, made me run 100 miles a week.

I think my biggest run was 252 at 50. I turned 50 and the week after I ran 252, which I was pretty happy with.

James “Jet” Davies2:10

But then uh

James “Jet” Davies2:11

Then my hips gave way.

James “Jet” Davies2:16

So, I grew up in London. Uh my old man's a Australian from the farm. My mom kind of grew up workingass in uh in England and they educated me in London.

James “Jet” Davies2:29

No, my dad did.

James “Jet” Davies2:30

That's where he grew up. Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies2:36

Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies2:39

I mean, maybe not the best, but the ones my parents thought were the best. So, you know

James “Jet” Davies2:45

So, I went to school in uh in London. And I went to like a one of the kind of prestigious boys schools in London called Highgate School. It was founded in 1565.

Yeah. It's one of these kind of crazy things. And

James “Jet” Davies3:01

Yeah. I mean, think about that. They were like that school was going when they executed the king of England in the 1600s. Yeah. Super old.

James “Jet” Davies3:12

Uh I mean like I enjoyed it. like it kind of suited me well, I guess, at a certain level at the time. We've talked about it. It's it's kind of weird for Americans to think about because from the age of 9 to the age of 18, I was not educated with or by a woman. So, there was like no woman in my orbit other than my mom and my sisters.

James “Jet” Davies3:35

I did not live at the school. Some of the boys lived at the school, some of them went home at night. I went home at night.

Thank God.

James “Jet” Davies4:01

There were some of those kids, they were not seeing their parents for 3 months at a time.

James “Jet” Davies4:16

You're a baby.

James “Jet” Davies4:50

No, I mean it was all pretty similar, but it was I mean it's I agree with what you said like it's one thing sending a kid when they're 13, it's another sending a kid when they're nine. So like that period of education, I'd say from maybe 10 to 12. Looking back at the time, I would have said, "Yeah, I enjoyed it." Even as a 40-year-old, I probably would have said I enjoyed it. Now I'm in my 50s. I have four of my own children. My youngest daughter is eight.

And I think about what it would have been like for like to send her to a single sex school with like some of the kids living there. Like I just can't like even countenance it. And the more I look at it, the kind of stranger it becomes. Yeah. Yeah. The the the further I focus out and I think there's also a lot as you kind of go through middle age, you begin to look at things and it's so long ago that like you look at it almost without emotion.

James “Jet” Davies5:59

Yeah, there was a little of that. Yeah. So yeah, I mean the older I get, the more I dig into that period of my life. Call it 10 to 12. It's almost like two distinct periods like 10 to 12 then 13 to 18. But 10 to 12, uh, you know, I I I kind of look at it. There was a fair amount of like emotional abuse, some sexual abuse, um, which I guess you kind of view as like lowlevel sexual abuse, but a lot of stuff that just would not go down in today's day and age.

And I was discussing with my wife the other day who grew up in England as well. I was like, "Look, here are some things that happened to me given that you grew up in the 80s in England as well. Like, do you think this was unusual?" and she was like, "Wow, that is seriously weird stuff." Um,

James “Jet” Davies7:50

Yeah. It's it's been a really interesting kind of journey for me. Like a lot of it's happened in therapy. Like for me, therapy has been like a big deal. I'm not sure I agree with kind of therapy in perpetuity, but for a period of time in my life, it's been useful.

And I think there's like three stages of it. There's like the denial stage which is like

You have to not look at it otherwise how you going to survive. And then I went through a stage of like holy [ __ ] this is so weird. Why did it happen to me? Like I kind of bit of victimhood.

James “Jet” Davies8:19

And now I'm in a place where I look at it pretty objectively and I'm like

There are parts of this that actually really like stunted me as a human. Yeah,

I definitely was more of an [ __ ] because of what happened to me between 10 and 12,

But also gave me a lot of resilience

Because if you go through that kind of experience, like not much is going to take you down later.

James “Jet” Davies10:12

I think if you're if you're a banker, what you'd call this is positive selection bias,

Right? which is if you're a pedophile and you're that way inclined, I think there's this kind of like slightly naive assumption that these people are not sophisticated in the way they operate, right? And so if I look at, you know, the teachers I had there, then I'm certainly not accusing them all of being pedophile, but there was some stuff went [snorts] down there

Around viewing little boys bodies at times touching little boys bodies and kind of psychological factors which I don't think were acceptable at any time in life.

Right? If you are one of the small number of people that actually wants to engage in that behavior and you're a sophisticated, well educated, college educated human, what you're going to do is you're going to look at opportunities to engage in that proclivity.

James “Jet” Davies11:01

And so what better way to do it than to find an establishment where it's all young boys and you can have unfeted access because some of them are living there. M

Which is why I mean it's certainly not exclusive to my uh circumstances but why this whole like they call them public schools in England but they're actually private

This whole public school network is you know it's beginning to become a a thematic in English culture at the moment you know Princess Diana's uh brother has just written a book about it

Where why so much kind of emotional physical abuse happens in these environments.

James “Jet” Davies11:37

I don't want to say if it's common now, but it's certain like in the 1980s, you know, just think about it. Like if if like I said, if you want to go and find like a pool of boys, their parents aren't there. What are you going to do? And so looking back on it, I talked to my parents about it and my parents are these kind of like wonderful, they call it, you know, they you my father's what they call a child of the empire.

Like they looked up to the British and the British Empire and they're like, "Okay, I can send my son to this elite school." And

It's only now he looks back on it and says, "What was I thinking?" Like

Why would you want to go to Oxford or Cambridge and get a degree from Oxford or Cambridge as a human as a man? Why would you then choose to use that degree teaching 10-year-old boys?

And I'm sure a lot of them it's well intentioned, but some of them it wasn't.

James “Jet” Davies14:28

I I look, I think it's a like I do think times have changed a little bit because I'm pretty sure I'm I would hope now that if my 8-year-old daughter went to like a summer camp or something and all the responsible adults were saying, "You kids all have to get in a bath naked

And soap yourself down while we watch." I'm pretty sure my daughter would tell me about that. But that was that was like the first thing that happened as soon as we

James “Jet” Davies15:16

Yeah. I I I don't think I was even thinking that. I was just thinking everyone's doing it. Like we're all in the bath together. Like it's And but it's only now as a 50-year-old I'm like, why were these eight men standing around watching 20 young boys naked in a bath and like

Why did they insist on us being naked so much?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And but when you're nine, I just don't think you're thinking that.

James “Jet” Davies15:53

Incredibly strict, incredibly um competitive. So you were you were kind of set to compete against each other from day one. But I think that's quite normal in kind of elite education. But like if you failed, if you didn't do what you were meant to do, if you showed any kind of emotional outburst, like the response was just visceral and immediate

James “Jet” Davies16:16

And often it would be physical, but normally it was kind of emotional.

James “Jet” Davies16:21

I mean, they they'd move past beating kids with canes, but you know, you'd see kids get hit occasionally, but mostly if you made a mistake, you just be like bowled out in front of the other kids. It was a kind of weird psychological uh torture I guess for two or three years.

James “Jet” Davies17:04

I mean, the weird thing is, so I have four daughters. One is quite young and the other's 23, 20, and 18.

James “Jet” Davies17:12

And they did not go through anything like, you know, what I went through.

James “Jet” Davies17:15

But still, when they were uh young girls at a similar age, they went to a single uh gender school.

James “Jet” Davies17:24

All girls. There was none of this kind of weirdness. I'm talking about. But when they talk about it, they hated it.

James “Jet” Davies17:32

Yeah. Yeah. They I had I just had my 20-year-old with me now, and she's like, "Any mental health issues I've had in my life were caused by that period of my life."

James “Jet” Davies17:41

And it was similar weirdness. Like my my daughters uh used to if they saw a teacher, used to have to curtsy in front of the teacher.

James “Jet” Davies17:49

Yeah. And that age. And so, you know, you ask how a parent could possibly like send their kid into this and like I did it.

James “Jet” Davies18:07

To be clear, I don't think any of that was happening. But I do think like I have a personal view now which is there's this period of time between call it 10 and 13 where children are almost like blossoming. they're kind of prepubescent and it's a really sensitive period of time and so any environmental factors which are a little bit strange

Uh have an amplified effect.

James “Jet” Davies18:30

And I think really the ultimate strangeness is sending them to a single gender school

Like like my my daughters have no brothers

And at that time I was uh by then I was divorced from my wife so I wasn't living with them. So they grew up at that period of their lives. They like my my eldest daughter probably wasn't educated around boys until she was 15 years old. And I think there's a certain weirdness, you know, around that in itself.

James “Jet” Davies20:53

It's actually one of the things I love most about America.

So, my 8-year-old daughter is the first of my children that's been at co-ed school at that age and the first of my kids uh not to be privately educated. So she's at a local public school where we live and there's just so many parts of American schooling which you take for granted

That I'm witnessing. So the other thing is the way they treat the teachers which is

They treat the teachers with respect but no one's curtsying to a teacher in America. Like our teachers weren't called teachers, they were called masters.

Like that in itself psychologically just sets you in this weird power imbalance from day one. It's actually one of the things I'm enjoying most about my new job is being a dad, taking my daughter to school every day and actually seeing the American school system.

James “Jet” Davies22:05

Oh, good.

Yeah. It's devastating for us.

James “Jet” Davies22:08

Yeah. She pledges allegiance every morning. She doesn't even have an American passport, but she's Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies22:13

She was born in England.

James “Jet” Davies22:16

Not that easy.

James “Jet” Davies22:30

So, you basically have a point where you're like 12 or 13 where you go from what they call prep school, preparatory school into your kind of secondary education.

James “Jet” Davies22:40

And at that point, it became much kind of healthier from my perspective because there wasn't this kind of weird interference from the teachers.

James “Jet” Davies24:33

Yeah. Yeah. So, I think the weird stuff becomes less common, you know, and it was honestly still a little bit strange that until I got to college, I'd never sat in a classroom with a girl before,

And there there's a bit of strangeness to that, but then suddenly you're in a much more level playing field where you don't have teachers exercising outside kind of power dynamic

And then it becomes I mean, you would have done amazing. You would have done so well at any British boarding school. You would have been the king cuz it's it's very sports dependent.

James “Jet” Davies25:02

No, I stayed at home for secondary school, but it definitely got more vicious, but it felt like that was actually

I mean, it was probably unhealthily vicious, but like that's going to happen when you get 600 boys together between the age of 13 and 18. Like, think

You're effectively running a kind of prison at some level. Like, you're not going to that people aren't going to kind of

Get along the whole time. So, that yeah, I felt maybe it was a little bit more vicious. And now again, what prompted me looking at a lot of my school years was two years ago, one of my really good friends uh from all the way through from the age of 9 to 18. He actually went to college with me as well.

James “Jet” Davies25:57

Then he went into finance and it was just before I left finance and the guy just was on a business trip, had a heart attack and died and we all went back uh to where we grew up and he had a huge really popular guy. We had like a there was a huge funeral ceremony for him and his sister stood up and said, you know, he hated his time at school and we all came back and oh, we thought he really liked it. And we all kind of started unpicking a bit of this stuff.

And yeah, I out of maybe 12 of us that went for dinner, you know, it's sometimes we're good, sometimes we're bad, but I'd say 11 had overwhelmingly bad experiences and one had been okay with it.

James “Jet” Davies26:55

It has. I think it has.

James “Jet” Davies27:16

There's something going on there.

James “Jet” Davies27:23

Yes.

James “Jet” Davies27:23

I I think that the schools have like really decreased that.

I think that's like a massive change in society. But where I draw the line personally cuz I agree with you. You don't want these things getting too loose.

Yeah. And so where I struggle is where I start watching all the sports events

Without winners and losers.

James “Jet” Davies28:01

That that becomes like that's not going to work.

James “Jet” Davies28:42

Yep.

James “Jet” Davies28:59

So I did a lot of swimming. I did a lot of running. Uh the running like at that time in England like running was a big deal. That's probably why I got into it. So you had I mean you probably remember them. Steve Ovette, Sebastian Co.

These were like the national heroes of Co.

James “Jet” Davies29:10

That's right. Yeah. So I mean the standards were pretty high then. So yeah, but I was never like I mean I was good, but I was never kind of like national level good or anything.

James “Jet” Davies29:34

It's also my initials. So I think it was more than that.

James “Jet” Davies29:42

So I have my I have two middle initials. Yeah. The English often have two. So my my parents

No. So my parents basically were like determined to make me like

James “Jet” Davies29:52

Socially I I don't think they could ever have hoped for an aristocrat but like upper middle class cuz they really weren't

And I hope they don't hear this cuz that would upset them but um and so like all the kind of upper middle class people would have too middle initial.

So they gave me two. Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies30:14

Yeah. Yeah. And I I feel really bad about it because I feel like they invested so much of their lives to put me in a position where I could be a version of myself and I kind of got to that position where I could be that version of myself and then I was just like, I want no part of this whatsoever. It's like the opposite of who I am as a human.

James “Jet” Davies30:50

I think that's the great irony of life is you get like a generation who have grown up like my parents grew up poor and I'll never know what it was to grow up poor cuz I didn't.

James “Jet” Davies30:58

And like my dad points that out to me frequently like in a loving way. Yeah.

So all he wanted which is like the best for me was to say you will never be poor and the way you'll never be poor is to be a lawyer which is I was originally and a banker

And then he pushed me through that and I was like I'd much rather my kids be like happy and poor and so like in three generations you just go back to the start again.

James “Jet” Davies32:52

The thing but the thing that I find strange which is like a I think like a relatively recent thing in society is so I agree with everything you've said, right? Which is if you find something you love, it's no longer like I don't feel like I go to work every day anymore. I feel like I'm just doing something I love. I can see myself doing it for years.

But there's this tendency in adults when they have kids to push their kids away from what they did.

James “Jet” Davies33:16

And that's actually ridiculous. And so what you've ended up with is like in the old days like if your dad was a shoe maker, you would become a shoe maker. And guess what? Like it's highly likely one of those three boys, one of the four kids is going to want to make a run a career out of sports.

James “Jet” Davies33:33

But it's almost like we push them away from that now.

And I I find that really weird. M

So my dad was a dentist and he actually really I think he really enjoyed being a dentist but I don't think he ever made as much money as he would like to make being a dentist and so rather than saying to me try and go into the medical profession or something like that he said look from what I can see the best thing to do is be a lawyer you must be a lawyer you must be no one asked me if I want to be a lawyer I was just like I be a lawyer and so I wouldn't be a lawyer I was a pretty horrible lawyer and I would never do it again but my daughter is a doctor and so like I feel like that is somewhere where in like my lineage there somewhere like an ancestral like DNA that that's what we do in my family and he tried to kind of like push it away cuz he didn't think there was

Security in it.

James “Jet” Davies34:57

But there's because I I have a few friends who do similar jobs and they say two things to me. The first thing is your brother-in-law like literally saving lives. Like when you go home like it's not about being worthy, but like you can go home and say that's what I did today.

And then someone else told me really interestingly the other day within medicine a lot of people view what your brother-in-law does as the purest form of medicine.

James “Jet” Davies35:19

Because you don't have time for like the second guess or the doing going to do an MRI scan. You're just constantly living by your wit.

James “Jet” Davies37:00

Secondary college.

James “Jet” Davies37:02

I went to college at a university called Bristol. Yeah. So that was like that was actually probably again with the benefit of a bit of space like the earliest like massive probably the biggest disappointment of my life even now versus how I was at the time is I didn't get into Oxford. So there's like

James “Jet” Davies37:20

I applied I applied twice and didn't get in.

James “Jet” Davies37:24

I I wasn't good enough.

James “Jet” Davies37:30

Yeah. So the application process for Oxford is like hilariously brutal. So you basically uh you're going through your um your kind of end of secondary school exams which are called A levels

But Oxford says you know what we don't really care about A levels we're going to set our own exam

And if you pass our exam we'll basically say you can get in with like the minimum grades in A levels which like even like a Prince Harry can do that right so it was kind of like they said a super exam uh you go you you sit it and then if you do well enough in the exam and they invite you for interview. So like I was pretty cocky when I was I guess 16 or 17 at the time. [clears throat] So I decided to apply to do the hardest course at the hardest college.

So it's not like uh uh US colleges where you kind of have like a more broad-based approach choose. It's like you choose when you go.

So the course that all the uh prime ministers and like the smartest guys in England do is called politics, philosophy and economics. Okay. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to apply to do PPE and like I just know I can get in. So I went to sit the exam and like the exam itself is hilarious. So you do like a pretty hardcore math exam and then they had something called the general paper and the I've never seen anything like it to this day.

So the general paper had I think it was lasted for 3 hours. that had one mandatory question and like 50 optional questions, but you could do as many of the optional questions as you wanted.

James “Jet” Davies39:08

Whatever you wanted. You could just do a line on each thing,

James “Jet” Davies39:16

Yeah. And it's all kind of like to see if you have like an out of the box intellect. And I think this is either a test paper or the paper I sat. The question you had to answer was God is our mother and she is black. Discuss and I'm like a 16-year-old kid. I'm like, what am I doing with this? So, do you remember what you said in a nutshell?

James “Jet” Davies39:55

So, I mean, and that's probably what they were looking for. Um, so anyway, I got through that stage of it and then they call you up to Oxford. So, all the students have gone home and [snorts] they bring you to Oxford and you spend a few days there and they work out

James “Jet” Davies40:13

No, no, if you haven't flunkked the test. So they I don't know how many but if people there just nobody

James “Jet” Davies40:23

So you get invited up. So you go on there like I think I got a like a I got a bus up there and it was like two nights but like you're in this kind of like venerable institution.

James “Jet” Davies40:34

It's the end of it would have been like December just before Christmas. It's like Hogwarts or something.

James “Jet” Davies40:39

And I go up there and I had to have interviews with three sets of professors. one for economics, one philosophy, one for politics. I wasn't studying any of these subjects. So, I'm like trying to read up on them like the idiots guide to philosophy, whatever. And I just shat the bed at that.

James “Jet” Davies41:02

Yeah. I I had like I feel like I did okay in maybe the politics and economics.

James “Jet” Davies41:06

And then uh I had a philosophy dawn with all the profess professors interview me for philosophy. And we walked in and you were meant to have read all these books we hadn't read because I was an idiot. Oh my gosh, I'm so arrogant. And he's sitting like this with me and he looks at me and he goes puts his hands on the table and he says, "Is this a table I'm sitting behind?" And one of the texts we were meant to have read is this kind of text which makes you challenge like the reality of things.

So just because you can see it and touch it

And hear it doesn't mean it's actually a table. is a guy called Bertrand Russell wrote about it and I hadn't read it. So I'm kind of like looking at this guy like of course it's a table in front of you and he yeah he did like I think it was meant to last for an hour and maybe the interview and after like 15 or 20 minutes he said uh it's over

James “Jet” Davies41:55

I think you would have given the wrong answer.

James “Jet” Davies42:49

Yeah. You you're the kind of kid they would have looked for to be honest.

James “Jet” Davies43:00

No. So, you wait you wait for a while.

James “Jet” Davies43:05

Or were you like, "Oh, maybe I did." All right. No, because like some of the kids were like that was happening and they decided that they loved the kid. So, like you just didn't know.

James “Jet” Davies43:15

And then I remember getting the envelope

And yeah, like I'd never I think I'd never had kind of anything short of an Agrade in my whole life. And it was just like it was like a slap in the face. And it was Yeah. It was probably like the first time I had a real like slap in the face.

James “Jet” Davies43:34

Yeah. And I had like a decision to make. Actually, in retrospect, I mean, people say this, I think, to make themselves feel better, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me because I became way more resilient as a result. And I think had I gotten in, I would have become unbearable. like

I would have been a far worse version of myself than I even became in the end.

James “Jet” Davies44:19

I I think it's right. If I look at my first two daughters, my eldest daughter has kind of sailed through. Not sailed through, I mean, she's worked incredibly hard and like, but

She hasn't failed anything

And that actually scares me a bit,

James “Jet” Davies44:34

And the second one had a similar experience to me at the end of her uh secondary school education.

And I didn't want to tell her at the time, but I was just thinking, "This is the best thing that's ever happened to you."

James “Jet” Davies44:50

Yeah, I applied twice. I mean, the second time was more by by the second time I'd already got a a place at like the basically what was then the college for Oxford rejects. It's this place called Bristol.

James “Jet” Davies45:01

Uh yeah, that's right. It's in the west. And so, I I mean, but I applied again, but it was more kind of like let's see if

James “Jet” Davies45:08

Yeah. Yeah. And so, I wasn't that disappointed then. Then I went to Bristol. So Bristol is so now I mean it's a pretty good college. At the time it was definitely we've kind of gone Oxford, Cambridge, probably Bristol and a couple of others. So it's a really good college.

James “Jet” Davies45:26

Depends? It depends.

James “Jet” Davies45:30

It's kind of like Harvard and Yale, but it also depends on what you're studying. So for some degrees you'd rather be at Cambridge. So I end up at Bristol. So Bristol was basically bizarrely where all the super rich kids ended up. So the kind of kids that my parents wanted me to hang out with, I got it.

They had all ended up at Bristol.

James “Jet” Davies45:50

So my wife, who's from the north of England and like uh

Resolutely workingass, she used to call it Bristol 90210. So that was the kind of vibe, but the Hills 90210. So I ended up there with a bunch of posh kids. Um and had Yeah, I had a pretty easy time there. Pretty good time there.

And you studied law. studied law. Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies46:13

No. So it's it's actually pretty wild how it happened back in the day. So they used to come down in your second year, I think at the beginning of your second year. So I would have been still a teenager and the law firms used to come down, interview everyone and offer you a job like two and a half years in the future. Wow.

And you'd sign a contract and lock yourself in.

Interesting. So, I signed that contract at some point, I think, in my second year, maybe the beginning of my third year at Bristol.

James “Jet” Davies46:44

It's a three-ear school, but then you do a year of law school afterwards.

James “Jet” Davies46:47

So, I signed I was thinking this the other day. I signed a contract. I would have been 19 or 20, a contract of employment because you agree to go and work for two years when you come out of training. And I was under continuous contract of employment then until I was 51.

James “Jet” Davies47:06

I only had two I had two employers. I had Link Lators which is like a UK law firm law firm, right? Yeah. They're they're kind of pretty good UK law firm.

James “Jet” Davies47:14

I had them until I was I don't 27 and then 27 through 51 I was contracted by Deutsche Bank.

James “Jet” Davies47:28

I mean just money to be honest. And were you when you were at linkers, what kind of law were you practicing? Corporate.

I was doing so what I I I just had a series of lucky breaks in my life. And there's like a huge lucky break in my life that I got there, they make you spend two years kind of trying everything.

James “Jet” Davies47:45

And the thing I like the most was uh financial derivatives which you remember from your time there

James “Jet” Davies48:12

Super complicated and it was just being established

James “Jet” Davies48:53

Yeah, you nailed it. You nailed it. And so I mean

James “Jet” Davies48:57

I think like the easiest way to understand derivatives is derivatives are what caused the financial crisis. Like no shadow of a doubt. Like people didn't understand them. They were way too leveraged. It's like a leverage gamble on anything.

James “Jet” Davies50:30

I think there was a lot more corruption before than there is now. Like I don't know what happened in this case, but

James “Jet” Davies51:16

And the kid's like 26 years old. He's like a $4 billion.

James “Jet” Davies51:22

The real question to me is like why do like every time you see that

Which is young kid FTX same thing running huge fund leveraged up the wazoo like why are people not thinking this doesn't make sense? It's like how many times do they have to blow up? And then every time the young person gets blamed and like to me it's kind of like we shouldn't be blaming the young person like who gave him that much leverage.

Like who gave Stan Bank when freed all that money? Like

James “Jet” Davies52:20

But going back to when I was a lawyer, I just got like I've had a few moments in my life where I've just been supremely lucky.

James “Jet” Davies52:44

And right at the end of my training, so you used to have to sit in an office with like a master lawyer. It's like very uh hierarchical.

James “Jet” Davies52:54

No.

James “Jet” Davies52:56

That's only in court. You'd share an office. It was so uh it wasn't humiliating, but it was like you were constantly under the spotlight. So, it was an office maybe this big. Yeah.

There'd be a big desk with a partner in the law firm and then you'd have a little debt and

James “Jet” Davies53:15

You'd be listening to everything you said. So, like it was it's great way to learn because you'd pick up the phone and you'd say your name wrong and you put it down and it'd be like, "Uh, no, that's not how we answer the phone." And they'd check every letter you sent out to make sure it was written with the right tone, with the right grammar, everything.

James “Jet” Davies53:32

Amazing training, but like brutal. Absolutely. And it was also at a time where they didn't really have like such good word processors. So like a lot of my nights was just spent like at the printers. You take like the text of something, you take it to a printer, they type set it.

James “Jet” Davies53:46

And then you just sit there checking that the type set matched what you'd asked them to set it to.

James “Jet” Davies53:52

So that was my life. But um right at the end I got sat with a guy who probably was slash is the best like probably the most highly regarded derivatives lawyer in the world. He literally wrote the book on it.

James “Jet” Davies54:07

And for 6 months he trained with me with me sitting in an office with him and it was like everything. Every time I wrote a letter like dear Mr. Wright out please find attached your house deeds or whatever like he would have to read it. He would mock it up and I'd get to work in the morning. He used to work late and I just have this pile of my stuff that he just would have crucified.

James “Jet” Davies54:31

It was a lot. But he he really taught me. I'm really grateful to this guy and he taught a few of us this way. And everyone went on to have like really say like good solid financial services careers and then suddenly the derivatives market grew up in the late that blew up in the late 90s early. You remember that?

Yeah of course. and Deutsche Bank was like the new kid on the block and the way they wanted to kind of announce themselves I think to a certain extent was in the derivatives market and so they had all these hot shot traders but they didn't have the back office or the legal department to handle it. So they went around and they said okay we can't afford the partners but who are the people that are learning from them

And I think in my first year they paid me five times as much as I was getting paid.

James “Jet” Davies55:21

I know I wasn't making that much money. So when I left Deutsche Bank, it was really interesting. They still had like a record of everything I've been getting when I came in.

And I think when I left Link Ladies, I've been paid maybe 505,000 a year.

James “Jet” Davies55:38

And they're like, "We'll pay 250 grand." It's like, you know what? Done. And uh

James “Jet” Davies55:52

Feast

James “Jet” Davies56:49

No, it changed your life overnight.

And that's what happened to me. It literally changed my life.

James “Jet” Davies56:58

You're like, I'm the [ __ ] man in here. Yep.

James “Jet” Davies57:03

Yeah, that's right. That's exactly what I did.

James “Jet” Davies57:07

Yeah, cuz you think he's going to go on for it.

James “Jet” Davies57:09

Yeah. Well, for you it pretty much did. In

Yeah. In trading floor terms. Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies57:33

No, I mean, not really. I mean, so I was still I was still in the legal department. I wasn't on the trading floor. Okay. And so I got there and one they all of the equivalents of me they'd hired from the other law firm. So they basically created this kind of new which was great because actually some of my best friends to this day like reformed in that moment.

James “Jet” Davies57:52

Well they but they didn't have one before. So they were like let's just get all the young guys. So we kind of knew what we were doing. And then at the same time they had like all these hot shot traders who really were calling the shots.

Yeah. And I hadn't been in that position in my life before where I'd been like almost like a secondass citizen because the traders were ruling the place and then like you'd get a phone call saying like it's Bob blah blah blah like I need you to do this immediately and if you said no they'd be like I pay your wages

James “Jet” Davies58:30

Yep. That's it. And I was that guy.

All right. So go. So

James “Jet” Davies58:38

That's exactly it. That's exact. Yes. And so but I was put into that, but like I had a bit more personality. So when the guy would come up to me and say, "You [ __ ] blah blah blah." I'd get back in his face

And they actually respected that,

James “Jet” Davies58:50

And so

James “Jet” Davies59:01

That's it. And that's what they have with me.

James “Jet” Davies59:02

And then so yeah, so I did that for maybe

I want to say maybe two years and I kind of enjoyed it, but like it's it's I can't I mean you'll understand it having worked in finance, but like

If you think you're a player, you like want to be on the team. That's right.

And I was kind of like in the boot room and I'm like I'm like I want to get in the team. So like I begged this guy, give me a job, this big South African guy to give me a job. And he was a funny guy. He's like ex- rugby player and he was a big personality.

So finally he goes, "Yeah, I give you a job." So it gives me a job in the front office and like this is like my dreams to come true. Yeah, I'm a trader. I'm like I'm going to make it.

James “Jet” Davies59:43

And I get to this job and I didn't realize I was just right at the bottom of the pile again.

And [clears throat] they were just crushing me every day.

And I had I mean, you remember the big trading floors you worked on? I was right at the front of the trading floor in the front row

James “Jet” Davies1:00:00

Like facing like where the the lift doors would open and they used to call it reception. So everyone would come in and say morning reception to me and like

And like at this stage my ego was quite big and like my ego was not handling it well.

And so I did it for about uh 6 months

James “Jet” Davies1:01:10

200 y

James “Jet” Davies1:02:51

It was It was wild cuz I I feel like you had like I mean, for a start, like before the financial crisis, the value of the London Stock Exchange was higher than the value of the New York Stock Exchange.

London was the mecca of finance. But then I mean now maybe for the last 10 years like Apple has been bigger than the whole of the London stock exchange combined. So it was like a different world and you probably had the same thing. They called them Barrow boys.

James “Jet” Davies1:03:14

Like the Essex boys found their way like and there was like no rules for those people.

James “Jet” Davies1:04:12

Yeah. Crazy.

James “Jet” Davies1:04:51

No, no, you get on the train. So I go to the receptionist and they basically I'm the receptionist and I just get like humiliated. Not humiliated but like I'm just like being screamed out all day day by the Sex boys being screamed out all day by everyone. I'm like I didn't [ __ ] sign up for this. Like I didn't go for this education for this. [snorts]

So around about that time my wife got pregnant. My ex-wife got pregnant with my first daughter and that like really like shocked me. I know how it was with you but like it really like

Made me think what the [ __ ] am I doing here? like I'm coming in being screamed at all day. I didn't get home before 9:00 p.m.

I don't think I'm ready to be a dad.

So I asked to go back to the legal department and this is this has never happened before.

James “Jet” Davies1:05:34

I They crushed me. They crushed me. Like and I in many ways I think I deserved it. Like it was like 6 months here in

But they were like no you you're here. No, they're like this South African guy I was working for is like he's like he used to call me chicken neck and he said listen here chicken neck that's not how it works. I said listen what I want to do like please don't hold me to it and he said a [ __ ] you and he never spoke to me again and I went back to the legal department.

James “Jet” Davies1:06:03

Oh yeah, it was ruth I'll take that back. He spoke to me again maybe six years later, but like I'd see him like this guy like I went to his 40th birthday party like I'd viewed him as like a mentor and like I'd see him

And he'd just like [ __ ] just maybe like shoulder check me.

So crazy.

James “Jet” Davies1:06:20

I went back for like a year or so. But like one thing I was actually kind of pretty competent what I was doing

And finding another desk which was a little bit uh I'd say maybe a bit more cerebral more up my kind of alley. They were like look do you want to come and try again? And this time I was like if I screw this up I'm really [ __ ] Yeah.

This is the last chance to learn. So I went and did that.

James “Jet” Davies1:06:45

I wasn't trading. So I was uh I was on the trading floor but I was kind of putting together like big structured deals where we were lending people money against things.

James “Jet” Davies1:06:57

A structured finance. Yeah I was always a structurer. I was a structured fin within structured finance. Like give you an example kind of a sad story but it's been kind of well publicized but uh for quite a long time Michael Jackson's the the asset which he used to uh give himself liquidity was he owned half of his own back catalog

James “Jet” Davies1:07:19

And the other half he'd actually sold to Sony to uh to pay to produce bad the album and so what he'd do is he just kept on like uh

Getting someone to lend a bit more money against so he kept refinancing these things and everyone would just lend a bit more money.

So we did deals like that and I was like the guy putting the deal together, putting the documents together, talking to the client, that kind of thing.

James “Jet” Davies1:07:44

So it must mean like at some point I mean the financial crisis was definitely like uh like allowed me to like come into my own a little bit because I mean that I mean you remember that

James “Jet” Davies1:07:59

Everything had to be on Exactly. It was right in the middle of it. Everything had to be unwound. I mean, if you've seen the film The Big Short, that was the trading desk at Deutsche Bank was like a massive part of that film.

And so, like Deutsche Bank was like squarely in the middle of it. And I think two things happened. One is they needed people who actually understood how the things fitted together.

And two, what it made me realize is like I definitely have a ADD brain. um although I don't think it's a disorder, but people with those brains tend to do well in any crisis situation because you can just kind of multitask. And so there there weren't that many people who could like actually work out how things worked and who were able to function in the crisis without kind of totally panicking. And yeah, I probably had 18 months to two years of being pretty heavily involved in that.

And like through that time, I mean, so many people were getting fired.

Yeah. Like every day like we everyone used to walk in with a bag full of their stuff

And put it under the desk cuz you just thought today was the day you're going to get fired.

Especially in credit trading which is why

James “Jet” Davies1:10:24

Yeah. Immediately. Yeah. There was a lot of that. So, yeah. So, in that backdrop, I look I I think I got a little bit lucky.

James “Jet” Davies1:10:43

Plus, everyone left

James “Jet” Davies1:10:46

No. No. So, like, and like, and because also, you know, I mean, what's interesting to me is like you had this huge like uh part of the capitalist system, which is the banking world, paying people all this money and everything. And then after the financial crisis, people said, "Okay, that can never happen again." Which is why you got the cap on bonuses and all this stuff.

James “Jet” Davies1:11:52

That's right. But that reduced the number of people you could have.

James “Jet” Davies1:11:55

But also what happened is you just had this massive transfer of talent really from banks

James “Jet” Davies1:12:04

To private equity. That's exactly

People just sat there and said, "You know what? it's not going to work for me in banking. Like I like and you know what you know I have no issue with these people but but if you wanted to make there was no one going to make $50 million a year in banking again.

James “Jet” Davies1:12:18

Maybe the CEO but no trader was going to make $50 million. So they said you know what I'm either going to go to a hedge fund or I'm going to private equity.

James “Jet” Davies1:12:24

And so a lot of people left and a lot of my kind of peers or people more senior than me that left then like have gone on to tremendously successful careers. But that just like left huge amounts of headroom for me to get promoted.

James “Jet” Davies1:13:14

I was for a short period of time and and so as a result I got promoted into all of these jobs that like I remember like

The first time I got an office. I mean you remember what it's like if you get an office on the trading floor like you have [ __ ] laugh.

Oh for sure. And they're like, you can have this tiny, it's like a broom cupboard. Yeah.

And I'm like,

I remember going into it like I felt like a shame to be in I was like, what am I doing in here? And I was [clears throat] like I like I never thought I was going to be on the trading floor of Dutch, let alone in and off it. Right. So I

James “Jet” Davies1:13:42

Huge. Huge. Actually had it throughout my career. I think everyone has

James “Jet” Davies1:13:48

That's it. If you if you don't have it, you're a sociopath.

Yeah. And there's a lot of them. If people are listening to this thinking, "Well, I've never had that." Then you should probably go and see someone.

James “Jet” Davies1:14:03

Yeah, I think that's right. So, yeah, I just kept on getting promoted and then I had some really good bosses to be honest and in 2012 they said, "Look, do you want to go and run this kind of structuring team in New York?" And I really didn't want to go to be honest. I had kids.

And you had never lived in the US. never lived in the US before. Uh, I'd lived for a brief time in Hong Kong, but like I had young kids and they were kind of insistent and then there was like a real moment of like finance world understanding for me which is I came to New York uh on some kind of business trip and I kind of started saying I don't really want to do it and I think if I hadn't done it I probably wouldn't have had a job but I probably still was trying to have the negotiation and then one of my friends and it became clear to me that one of my friends in New York that work for another bank was being interviewed for the same job

And I'm like if I don't [ __ ] get myself into this job quickly like it's going to be gone and I'm going to have no money and I've got these kids so I'm like okay I'll definitely go and um

So I came they were super good about it like

Actually um like contrary to opinion like do you bank on some of the HR things can be really good and so they were like really good my boss was really good about like you can fly back every weekend and see your kids you can do a week a month you can see your kids so And

James “Jet” Davies1:15:54

I was You weren't in the You weren't in the like three three room suite on uh Emirates, but you were in a bed

James “Jet” Davies1:16:10

Yes. And that's um

James “Jet” Davies1:16:17

No, they didn't. So your wife stayed my ex-wife as my ex-wife.

James “Jet” Davies1:16:21

No, I wasn't.

James “Jet” Davies1:16:23

I've been divorced by that stage for years. So, so I was coming back every weekend pretty much to see the girls. They came to see me a lot, but you know, it was

In retrospect, it wasn't a huge hardship,

But most of all, they just gave me this exposure to New York and America, which I'd never really had exposure to, and I was like, "Wow, what is this place?"

Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies1:16:48

It's a different vibe, but more so like America and New York. It just made me it m it made me really feel like how how small London was and how small the UK was. And also I had I also began to kind of realize that

I think I've got much more in common with Americans than I do with British people.

And so I was meeting all these people who were like genuinely happy to see you and they weren't like

Totally emotionally reserved.

James “Jet” Davies1:18:36

No. So if if if you drive home and you've got a brand new Porsche in England, your neighbor will not be happy for you.

James “Jet” Davies1:18:48

So they'll So what a neighbor says is all right for some. Almost like you got given it like you owned it. Whereas in America, if you drive home in a Porsche and you put it in your driveway, your neighbor's going to say, "Amazing. Can I look at it? Would you take a drive?"

James “Jet” Davies1:19:24

You'd be like all right for some.

James “Jet” Davies1:21:57

I think that I think there's also like this American nature

That like you want people to do well

James “Jet” Davies1:22:05

And that's like deepseated

And yeah when when you when you see it having not had it before you're kind of like actually I want some of that.

James “Jet” Davies1:22:24

I was going to say you introduce yourself to them. Of course.

That's like the worst thing that could happen to an English person. An American turns up.

James “Jet” Davies1:22:51

Yes. [snorts]

James “Jet” Davies1:22:59

No.

James “Jet” Davies1:23:12

Yes.

James “Jet” Davies1:23:22

I I I really enjoyed it. I think at that point I realized that like America was going to be somewhere in my future. Uh and I came back two years later and then I spent a few years kind of going on and off between London and New York. Like I was living in London but I was doing quite a lot of work in New York. So I kind of at that time I bought a house in New York State.

Yeah. I definitely was kind of getting like more attached to the US whether I knew it or not.

And then at the beginning of 2019, uh I got sent to run the fixed income department of Deutsche Bank in the US.

James “Jet” Davies1:23:58

Um so I got sent back there and shortly before that my fourth daughter had been born to um my now second wife. Complicated. So yeah, it's

James “Jet” Davies1:24:15

No, we got actually met another woman, had a kid, and then got married some like further down the line.

James “Jet” Davies1:24:42

Yeah, she's the real deal.

James “Jet” Davies1:24:55

Yeah, it's going pretty well. And then so I land in New York at the beginning of 2019 and then like a lot went on in a short period of time. So like the course of like 2019 was definitely like the inflection point of my life. I didn't know it was coming. And I think now I mean I have a lot of time to like contemplate my naval these days. I think looking back on it like a lot of stuff happened with the birth of my four fourth daughter.

So like I I personally believe that our children are sent to teach us lessons

And I think my fourth daughter came pretty fast in to tell me to stop being an [ __ ] So So she arrived

And yeah 2019 was like a really hard time to be at Deutsche Bank. they were kind of going through restructurings. Um, you know, we we got rid of a a whole division, the equities trading division, and the person who had to deliver that message was me. So, I had to walk into an auditorium full of people and let them all go.

James “Jet” Davies1:26:00

I'm punching this guy in the mouth today." That's probably where it would have happened. But no, I had a security detail for 24 hours cuz they thought the people and also I wasn't even the equities guy.

James “Jet” Davies1:26:16

Yes. And so the

James “Jet” Davies1:26:22

No. So we had security everywhere.

James “Jet” Davies1:26:24

And in the end, the only thing they picked up was like people filming it.

James “Jet” Davies1:26:29

I think at the time it was maybe a bit less common, but that felt a bit weird.

Yeah. And then I had this kind of security detail, but I remember I just remember it kind of weighing on me a little bit. And that I mean that wasn't the only thing. There was a lot going on in my life. Like I I had my first experience of one of my friends having a mental health crisis. And then like my whole like I remember there was a moment at the beginning of 2019 where I thought I [snorts] had a couple of friends going through kind of me mental health crisis and I was like you know what I've got this really strong like mental fortitude and that would never happen to me and literally like it was the worst thought that ever came into my mind because within 6 months I was just like devastated.

James “Jet” Davies1:27:44

That's right.

James “Jet” Davies1:28:10

That was I think that was actually maybe even like the year after.

So 2019 was just much more it wasn't even like I hate my job. It was

I I I can't even now I look back on it and I really try and uh rationalize it and I find it really hard to rationalize because and I think the best explanation I've had is actually from one of my college friends. It's like a really dear friend and she wrote a letter actually to Olivia in the middle of it and said,

"I've known him since he was 18 years old and he has a tendency when things are going too well to self-destruct."

And I think that's what happened.

And I think I I feel like looking back on it, it was almost like

It was too good. I didn't understand why I had it so good. And then, you know, Deutsche Bank went through a few things. A lot of my friends moved on into other jobs. So, I felt quite lonely in the US. And I, you know, I just I just crashed mentally and I behaved really badly across all [snorts] personal aspects of my life. Like I hurt a ton of people which I really regretted. I became a liar which is something I kind of tried not to be in my life.

And I found myself maybe in October 2019 like selfharming

And like quite seriously selfharming. And even now I actually thought about it before I came on the show. I was like you know what am I even going to mention this? And I do want to mention it because I think it happens a lot in finance. I think you have a lot of quite high performing people who are just always in this fight orflight mode and something relatively trivial can push them into a into a mode of quite a serious crisis. And I asked myself like when I the first time I ever cut my arms was [snorts] and I think the first time I did it was when I was at prep school.

I was literally remembering being a like a little boy and like cutting my arm and it was it was to make me kind of feel cuz I felt like numb to the world. And then I probably I think I did it a little bit when I was getting a divorce cuz that really hurt me

But not massively. And then in 2019, I was doing it a lot. And at some point, uh, I I didn't I I was kind of I had enough mental resilience. I don't think I really let it impact my professional existence. Like, no one even noticed at work. So, I was coming into work and I had like bandages on my arms and noticed. At some point, I shaved my head like I did some kind of like Britney Spears [ __ ] And no one picked up on that.

And then maybe in October 2019, uh my wife uh came in, she said, "Listen, like she came into the bathroom, blood everywhere." And she said, "Look, I can't like whether whether or not this relationship can continue is one thing, but I can tell you now it cannot continue while you're doing this and you need to go and get help immediately and you need to go and see a shrink." So I was like, "Okay, fine." And then like I was in the mode where I was like, "Okay, I need to find like the best shrink on Wall Street." Like go and find this shrink on Wall Street.

I was like, "Honestly, they should make a film about this." So I went to go and see this shrink. He was terrible. He was he was either the best shrink I've ever met or the worst shrink I've ever met.

But I went in and I said, "Look, I'm so like upset. I keep on doing this." And he said, "Well, what's setting you off?" And I said, "Well,

I think my wife hates me. I've let people around, you know, down around me. They don't like me. I just feel really bad about that." and he gave me a prescription for SSRIs and he said, "Go fill this prescription. It's going to make you feel better." So, I went and got the prescription. I got the pills out and only twice in my life I've had this feeling. The first was when I was 18 and I was uh offered cocaine

And I was like, I just don't need that in my system. My body was just like hard no.

James “Jet” Davies1:32:02

And as a result, I've never I mean, I've never touched cocaine really.

I'm not judgmental. I've never touched

James “Jet” Davies1:32:10

I'm jealous. I wish I never did. But but I'm not at all. I mean, I'm not like, "Oh my god, I'm holier than now." It's just like, "I've got enough of that [ __ ] crazy in me. I don't need any more of it."

And then I looked at the SSRI and I was like,

I'm not [ __ ] putting that in my body.

James “Jet” Davies1:32:24

And I remember I chucked them in the in the trash can and I I think to this day maybe one of the best decisions I've ever made cuz I think if I taken them, I would have found them very hard to get off them.

James “Jet” Davies1:32:34

Um and then you I kept seeing this therapist and Olivia, my wife, is like, "It's not working." Yeah.

And she said, "As far as I'm concerned, you're a narcissistic sociopath." And I was like, "That's like literally the last thing I want to hurt here." So she said, "You're a narcissistic sociopath. I go and cut my arms." And that was the cycle. So I went and told the shrink, and this is why I might be a genius. And so he goes, "You know what? The way to deal with this is bring your wife in." And I'm not sure you're allowed to do that in psychotherapy, but anyway, did it.

So Olivia comes in and we sit down and the therapist says, "Well, what's the problem?" I said, "Well, my wife here thinks I'm a narcissistic sociopath." is well I can tell you he's not a sociopath because if you're a sociopath you don't even ask the question. Yeah.

James “Jet” Davies1:33:16

So he's probably not a sociopath. Is he a narcissist? Probably a bit. We all are. And then he goes on this diet tribe the shrink about how he's a massive narcissist. So we finish the session and we walk out me and Olivia and she grabs my hand and she said, "You never have to go back there again." And it was like the first moment of connection we'd had in like 9 months. Yeah.

And it was actually the beginning of me getting better. So that's why I say he was either a genius. Like either he planned the whole thing or he's an idiot, but maybe an idiot.

James “Jet” Davies1:33:55

Well, the first thing is I just got so I mean again I've just been so lucky in my life because co happened right about then. Oh

James “Jet” Davies1:34:02

And so it just dumped me in nature. Yeah,

We had the house on Shelter Island which is where you know Shel's family have their house where I met you

And so I was in nature a lot and that just totally

Regulated my nervous system.

James “Jet” Davies1:34:19

Yeah. Plus it was a it was kind of crisis management which I was pretty good at. So I felt like kind of valued in my career again.

Then Olivia and I um did a lot of therapy together and that kind of started making things get better. And then at some point I started valuing myself less with money which is when we started having those conversations and like it part of it was like innate to me and part of it is I had people around you like me just saying what the [ __ ] you talking about this is horshit

And gradually I think I stopped valuing myself by reference to money so much.

Yeah. But as you know the minute you do that you become uh I think less effective within the finance world and that's a massive statement. I understand that there is exceptions but as a general statement I think it's right.

James “Jet” Davies1:35:09

And I became less good at my job and as I became less good at my job

Suddenly you know my career you know wasn't progressing in the way it had before.

Yeah. And yeah, gradually it's an interesting thing because I have absolutely a lot of people I think who leave finance have like hard feelings towards their firms or whatever. I have none. Like I have the best friends. They looked after me so well. Like what a ride I had at Deutsche Bank.

James “Jet” Davies1:35:37

And they saw this young kid who was 26 or 27 when I arrived and all I ever cared about was money.

And suddenly I'm in my late 40s

And I'm like, you know what, maybe I don't care that much about money anymore. and I was probably less good at my my job as a result.

James “Jet” Davies1:35:52

So, I think by the time we got it, I definitely attended a lot of uh uh retreats. So, like mostly like men's groups. Like I really enjoy those environments of like

I think cuz I had such a negative connotation around all male groups. Like going into one where it was a good one. I was like, "Wow, that's [ __ ] amazing.

James “Jet” Davies1:36:27

And and so I was for about two years I'd been saying to Olivia, you know, I really want to buy a place so we can run retreats. And she'd be she told me not to be so ridiculous.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I I'll be honest with you, and this is when we were discussing it, like every year would come around, I'd get to the end of the year, get paid a bonus.

I'd say, "God, I really don't think I'm made for this anymore." You'd say, "Dude, get the [ __ ] out." And I'd say, "Just one more year."

And in January 2024,

I was in the middle of that extension of my contract by one year. And I really thought they'd extend,

Even though I've been telling everyone how miserable I was. And they just said, "No, we don't want to extend it." And so like on the kind of winter's day, January 2024, they just said, "Look, my boss came in." They could not have been better about it. They like had a beautiful party like leaving party for me. They said, "It's over." And not many people get to 51 on a trading floor. And

But it was still a shock to me.

James “Jet” Davies1:39:00

Yeah. Exactly right. Exactly right. So it was, you know,

James “Jet” Davies1:39:10

But there is still an element of rejection. Of course, if you have a personality like mine or yours, like I just don't deal with rejection.

James “Jet” Davies1:39:18

But it was, weirdly for me, it wasn't a I hate these people. It was just like

I think I had a month in which I like slipped into quiet depression where it's just like this has been my family for nearly a quarter of a century

And now it's not there anymore and they didn't want me. Yeah. And that was but what was interesting I had like tools to deal with it

And I kind of worked through it. We just had a house redone in Manhattan. I had to tell Olivia that we weren't going to live there cuz we couldn't afford to. She took that like a champ. And then we were kind of at this crossroads.

James “Jet” Davies1:39:59

It was a gorgeous place. I mean it still is a gorgeous place and it was like she'd spent four years renovating It was a massive deal for her

And she took it like a champ. We got two choices here. We can go back to London, which is what everyone expects. You I've got three daughters there who I mean the world to me, or we can just see if there's a house available kind of around New York where we could do retreats at the weekend.

James “Jet” Davies1:40:22

No, we still have that.

James “Jet” Davies1:40:24

Well, not at the moment cuz it basically exploded this winter. Bit of pipe birth. That's a whole another story.

James “Jet” Davies1:40:31

Hopefully in the future. So anyway, so um so yes, we kind of put it out there to the world and then in April 2024, uh this realtor up in the Birkshars, which is about 2 and 1/2 hours north of New York City

James “Jet” Davies1:40:46

That's right. Yeah. Exactly.

James “Jet” Davies1:40:49

Exactly in the middle. At the bottom of the Burkes

Calls and says, "We've got this place. You've got to look at it. It's amazing." And so we show up and this place is just ridiculous. So there's a beautiful old stone mana house which has been built by a Boston department store magnate in the 1800s. Beautiful.

But then that has been run for the past 35 years as a really advanced treatment center for uh families with aut affected by autism.

And they've built another nine or 10 structures which are basically kind of like quai hotels.

Yeah. So we go from trying to run a retreat for maybe 10 people at a time to something that can house 50 to 60.

James “Jet” Davies1:41:29

So the guy shows us around and it was it was I mean it was comical. We were laughing cuz like here's another building. Here's another building. Here's another building. I was like thank you so much for showing it to me but

This is ridiculous.

James “Jet” Davies1:41:53

100% 100%. Yeah. Like it's like it's like saying I can fly like a light light aircraft and now I'm going to

James “Jet” Davies1:42:03

Yeah, exactly. And um

So the guy, the realtor, again, this is like a pivotal moment in my life. I said, "Look, thank you for showing me. Let's keep on looking." And I said to Olivia, "Look, I guess London's probably the most likely thing." And the realtor would not leave me alone.

James “Jet” Davies1:42:18

And um and so originally the guy had listed the whole property, this is all public record, so I I don't mind sharing it. So uh listed the whole thing for $17.5 million, 85 acres directly attached to the Appalachian Trail. It's stunning.

And then no one had bought it. Like he put it on the market in 2019. No one had bought it. And then gradually he'd knocked it down to seven and a half.

James “Jet” Davies1:42:38

But I think that was like his walk away. Yeah.

I said, "Look, I just don't have $7.5 million to pay for this thing."

And the realtor says, "Look, what is the most you'd ever pay for it?" And I said, "Look, I I could probably get my hands on $5 million, but I'm not paying I can't pay any more than that." And he said, "Write the guy a letter." So, I wrote the guy a letter saying, "Look, we want to use it as a spiritual retreat. I promise I won't subdivide it or do all these other things and and like turn it into a property development." And he came back and he basically agreed to the price.

I think we ended up buying it for just under $5.5 million. And so come July 2024, we found ourselves the owners of this huge I don't even know what to say like campus. Yeah.

Of its 42,000 square ft across 12 buildings in 85 acres.

And this thing is done like a 1990 summer camp.

Yeah. So there's orange carpet everywhere. No one's been in the buildings for 5 years and I still not quite sure what I was doing. Um but it was something to work with. Um

James “Jet” Davies1:43:57

Well no the good news is the property manager from the last business had sat there for 5 years keeping it alive. So the first thing we did was work out his price and kept him with us and he's he's still with us and he's like without him we'd probably be

James “Jet” Davies1:44:13

Only one.

James “Jet” Davies1:44:15

So I was like whatever this guy like needs to make him happy, we need him to stay. He's amazing. He's like a huge part of our project. So he stayed and then gradually uh I kind of collected a group of friends to to run it with me. Um all of whom have kind of backgrounds in I guess like hospitality but also had like a who have also had similar experiences in life to me where they've had

James “Jet” Davies1:44:46

A little bit. It's more like I mean I can include you in this like people who have had a shitty time in their life dug themselves out of and people who know the significance of know of having a place to go to when you're having a [ __ ] time in your life.

And so we ended up with six partners in the business.

James “Jet” Davies1:45:03

And we opened our door. We did a kind of fairly um low-level renovation and we opened our door to retreats in January 2025. So we've been running for 18 months. Um, and I was talking to one of the people, you know, they have websites like Airbnb for retreats where you can just put your load your retreat up. And we actually don't use them because we want to kind of control more what's going on at our place.

But I was talking to one of the people that runs one of them and they said in your first year of operation, if you're running a retreat, you're normally lucky to have between five and 10 retreats in a calendar year.

And last year we did uh somewhere between 35 and 45 events.

James “Jet” Davies1:46:12

I mean, I'm certainly not guru. I mean, I'm probably the worst person for hospitality cuz I'm

James “Jet” Davies1:46:22

BY the way, that's literally what happened the first weekend. The first weekend, maybe the third, like we had a weekend in,

This is a funny story. We had a weekend in February 2025, one of our first weekends.

James “Jet” Davies1:46:34

And we have like gates everywhere. They said, "Do not open the gate. There's roads everywhere." And there's like a natural pond which is covered in ice.

Yeah. And uh for every group we have a WhatsApp group of all the guests coming.

Okay. And they used to include me in it. They don't after. And someone drove up to a gate on the property, lifted it. It's actually a dear friend of mine now. Lifted it and parked their car on the ice of the

James “Jet” Davies1:47:02

Didn't because it's covered in snow.

James “Jet” Davies1:47:05

I'd get straight into the chat, take a picture of this thing. I said, "Whoever's car this is, you have 1 hour. Otherwise, I'm having it towed." And people are like, "Dude, there's a hospitality business. You got to write this to the guests."

James “Jet” Davies1:47:24

Well, that's why you're probably not cut out for either. Exactly. But yeah, so we um

It would been in it and yeah, to answer your question, probably uh so we have two types of event. We have events where people just say, "Here's my community. I want to bring it. This is what we do. And with them, what I'll do is I'll get them to come and visit the property first. I'll want to discuss what they do, you know, what their modalities are. There are some modalities I'm not comfortable with that happen at other places.

And then typically what they'll ask is I say, "Look, on the first night, would you mind showing up as the retreat owner and just giving a history of the place cuz the place has a crazy history."

Um, so that those those ones are actually pretty easy um cuz you don't feel that much interference. And then the rest of the times we're doing events with uh people that we want to bring. So facilitators we want to bring and our programming and those I have to be super involved in.

James “Jet” Davies1:48:31

Yeah. So, we had a guy who I think you've come across called Tony Riddle who's

James “Jet” Davies1:48:36

Uh uh pretty well known in the UK and he's um

He's around kind of like going back to basics in terms of human living. He was there last weekend with maybe a group of 25 and he has his own amazing practice, his own breath work and he's incredibly knowledgeable about all kinds of things

And so I actually joined the entire retreat as a participant.

James “Jet” Davies1:48:56

But I was just there to be like

Yeah. if he wanted to, you know, work out what room to use at what time or where the best place to watch the sunrise would be, I'd be like, we could go here.

Um, so that's kind of the most involved I'd be.

James “Jet” Davies1:49:38

I think we have 20.

James “Jet” Davies1:49:45

It's www.thetime.co.

James “Jet” Davies1:50:12

It's pee foliage, but the the best thing is the property has direct access to the Appalachian Trail.

So people will drive and try and access the AT from the property of the time.

And so the minute we got there, we were like, "This place is made for a running retreat."

James “Jet” Davies1:50:28

And we've sat out for 18 months. So, um I think every one of the partners has run a marathon. So, like everyone's super excited to go running and we're super excited that you that's coming to uh to lead us through it.

James “Jet” Davies1:51:15

I think it's going to be a combination of watching pretty much an elite athlete. I you talk us through kind of what it takes to be there and then I think

There's something about the space, the 85 acres that just leads you into a little bit of introspection.

James “Jet” Davies1:51:33

Whether you expect it or not, it's coming for you. And I think that's where I'm having the most uh enjoyment in in my newfound career is you you know we had a guy came this weekend. who's one of my old colleagues from Deutsche Bank in London and he'd had a really traumatic two years around bereavement in his family and he came out this last weekend and there was a lot of breath work this weekend

And I think he enjoyed the breath work but what he really enjoyed was like just being in nature having a bit of time to himself

Put the phone down sit in the trees and be with himself

And uh I think he processed a lot of that grief in that moment I'm not saying people have to come to do that course but I think

Understanding that this is not a place that, you know, you go for a run, come back, lock yourself in a room. It's a place of extreme natural beauty and we really play into that with everything we program.

James “Jet” Davies1:53:12

No, the room the rooms are nice. The rooms are good. And I would say this if you're in New York and you want to run with Ken or Boston.

But New York specifically because you can get a train from Grand Central to Wasek.

James “Jet” Davies1:53:22

So if you can get yourself on the train to Wasic, we can get you from Wasak. So cool.

And we're going to run, as you know, three times, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

James “Jet” Davies1:55:29

I mean I'd go a step further. So for me, I feel like in my life, whenever I put 100% of my effort into something,

It's really kind of achieved probably what I wanted from it.

James “Jet” Davies1:55:42

But when what I wanted was a little bit selfish, which was really the pursuit of money.

It was a little bit jagged, which is why I think I went through the process I went through in my 40s. I think the minute you start devoting all your energy to something which is not just about you,

Which if I'm honest, let's be honest with you, it's like that's what your book's about, right?

Then suddenly if you're putting that much effort into something which isn't 100% selfish, that's when I think like amazing things start happening. And we were talking about it earlier. The minute I started down that path, I actually started down that path in 2016 when I ran a the London marathon with a young lady who um was in a wheelchair and that was the first time I really did something altruistic.

James “Jet” Davies1:56:23

And actually good things started happening. We were talking about earlier. Then you start meeting different people.

James “Jet” Davies1:56:28

You meet the people you need to meet.

James “Jet” Davies1:58:47

Thanks, man. Thank you for the opportunity.