“Behave like a winner and you’ll be a winner”…
The top 100 richest people in the UK may not be a great example to follow when it comes to social life, marital harmony, or even contentment. But if you want to be rich, then there’s no better place to start than by studying the people who’ve already made it.

I’ve researched in depth the UK’s top 100 richest people, some of them in such detail that they feel like lifelong friends. There are five definitive characteristics that power their success and sweep the obstacles from the road ahead, giving them a clear run to build wealth fast.

5 Key Characteristics of the richest entrepreneurs

Just case you haven’t read the article on The Three Hidden Strategies for Multi Millionaire Success, you should know that of the top 100 richest in the UK, I discarded the 43 who inherited most of their wealth or were born into aristocracy, and I’ve disregarded the 9 who took opportunities that are unlikely to happen again – like the privatisation of Soviet National Utilities – which became a hotbed of wealth creation for a few well positioned individuals in the 1990’s … instead the spotlight is shining purely on the 48 self-made Entrepreneurs who created their own success by building businesses with their own wit and endeavour, no silver spoons, no golden hellos, and no platinum hand-me-downs, just ingenuity, drive and entrepreneurial spirit.

It’s the Entrepreneurial Spirit that we need to get to grips with – to define in detail – so we can make sure our behaviour is aligned for financial freedom.

a. Screw the rules
I’m going to start with this one, not because it’s the most important, but purely because it’s one of the most engaging for you, the reader – and I want to give you some juicy bits to get you warmed up for the rest of the briefing!
Although he’s not on the UK richlist, ****** who started Fedex in the US became famous for saying
“Show me the Law” – this was when the US National post office sued him for setting up a competing company. When the government solicitors looked at the law in detail, they found that there was no law to stop **** starting his business…
This is all about developing a healthy disregard for industry norms, unspoken rules, and unwritten laws.

Stewart Laidlaw (now Lord Laidlaw), bought a small publishing company in 1973 and turned it into the world’s largest conference organiser (IIR – Institute for International Research), making his £768m fortune … But while his commercial exploits appeared to be above board and legal, his personal life was rife with sex scandal.

The British tabloid The News of the World revealed that Laidlaw hires up to five, £3,000 vice girls at a time for all-night orgies involving spanking, bondage and lesbian sex at his Monaco home. After submitting a written confession to the newspaper in which he allegedly confesses a lifetime fighting sex addiction, Laidlaw reportedly checked himself into a six-week residential sex addict programme in South Africa, and donated £1million to help fellow sufferers.
I am not suggesting that you emulate this sort of behaviour, at least not until you’ve made your first billion, but it illustrates a distinct lack of respect for society’s rules…

Ajay Kalsi broke a few rules, ‘industry norms’ and conventions when he parked a huge oil rig in his back garden and left it there for a few weeks before it was redeployed on the next project – his neighbours were pretty surprised, he just said that it was the easiest place to keep it for a while. He made his £1.1 billion fortune in Oil Exploration.

In the early days of Virgin Music in 1971, Richard Branson made bogus trips to Dover pretending to sell records. He was running a scam to avoid paying customs and excise duty. His thought process was” rules are meant to be broken. He was playing a great game with the authorities and not to be taken seriously”.

After his last trip, customs and excise officials raided his shops and warehouse. They identified the marked records for which taxes were evaded, though he had shifted the records between shops on receiving a friendly tip-off. The officials arrested him and he spent a night in a prison cell. He was released after his mother deposited bail money and he agreed to pay a hefty fine to the customs and excise department. Since that episode, he has decided not to do anything that might put him behind bars.

b. Determination to succeed, the Self Discipline to carry it through.
Dib Dib Dib, Peter Cruddas puts his early success down to his membership of the Boy Scouts who taught him self-discipline and self-confidence – he went on to make his £750m treasure chest by building a Foreign Exchange business. (just in case you aren’t familiar with the “Dib, Dib, Dib”, that’s the first part of a Boy Scout Moto that goes “Dib Dib Dib, Dob, Dob, Dob”)
Jon Hunt who made his £875m fortune by starting Foxtons Estate Agents in London, built the company on distinguished itself from competing estate agents by opening a then-unusual 74 hours a week, including weekend and evening hours, rather than the conventional 40 hours worked by rival estate agents.

Philip Green and Alan Sugar are both known for their strict work routines – early to rise, fierce time management during the day, working late as required. They also enjoy at least 10 weeks holiday each year…

Richard Desmond, made his fortune in specialist magazines (including Asian Babes), he was driven to success by Disraeli’s motto: “nothing is difficult for the strong”

This takes us neatly to the next character trait – Bob Geldoff put one this most succinctly: “F**k Failure”. They’ve all had failures, cock ups, and mistakes some spectacular, many just day to day, but they learn from them , pick themselves up and move on – treating them as positive learning experiences.

The Barclay Brothers (now worth £2.2 billion), started a newsagents in Kensington called ‘Candy Corner’ that went bust, before embarking on…

Stewart Kirkham (now lord Kirkham) only started his furniture business because he failed to get the required 5 O levels to qualify for RAF Pilot training. Kirkham got a job in a local furniture store. After a few years, he rented a room above a snooker hall in Carcroft, and started making furniture upstairs and retailing it downstairs – this was the seed of the Furniture Empire DFS that made Lord Kirkham the multimillionaire he is today.
John Caudwell, (£1.5bm) Midland Mobile Phones, Wholesaler then Phones 2 U – started by making a loss for the first two years, but didn’t give up – he could see the potential in mobile phones, and sure enough, he was perfectly placed when the market exploded. This is not an unusual story – Amazon made a loss for 7 years… before becoming the internet behemoth it is today.

b. Fast Action – Decisive
Read this extract from an interview with Philip Green (£4.2Bn) (by Sally Vincent from the Guardian)
[Now it’s 1981. He bought the place in Bond Street. “I buy companies like this,” he said. And spares no detail. “I went to see this guy, Friday afternoon. Said I understand you want to sell your shop. He said, er, well, yes. I said what you want for it? He said 75 grand. I said Monday morning. Boom-boom – 75 for his lease, 75 for his stock, sight unseen. Go round Monday afternoon, exchange contracts. Then the phone rings. Guy says he understands my shop’s for sale. I say he’s made a mistake. Then some other guy phones up. I said not interested. Keeps ringing. Right? Seven and a half grand deposit at this point. I say, ‘You want to give me 250 grand for it tomorrow afternoon, you can buy it. Take your client round to my lawyer.’ So he did, he bought it. But, I said, you can’t have it for six weeks. Done. Boom-boom.]

An old pal of mine used to say “Drive Fast”, which I always liked – much better than the precautionary goodbye, “Take Care”…

e. Find a mentor, group of entrepreneurs to connect with.

Joe Lewis, mentored by George Soros, guided into Foreign Exchange, where he made his fortune.

Peter Hargreaves,’ personal touch, combined with his business partner’s Steve Landsdown – investment skills, create their £750m fortunes.

Michael Moritz, started with his newsletter and conference company for tech businesses, used his personal contacts to start Sequoia Captial – one of the early investors in Google, that went on to produce his fortune of £1.1 bn…

Many of these entrepreneurs mention the books they read, examples they followed and admired:
Gem from an interview with Philip Green who studied Lewis, an entrepreneur from Liverpool…

“When he talked about what he calls “the old style of trader”, he came over quite sentimental. Years back, he bought Lewises, a Liverpool department store, half a million square feet of retail opportunity, second only to Selfridges in terms of size. And along with the store he found its old archives. “I got this from books,” he said. “If you look back to the 1900s, you’ll find retail was all about theatre. When Lewis opened his store, he brought a ship into Liverpool dock with an enormous billboard on the side saying, ‘Everything One And Six!’ These were real, entrepreneurial people, feely-touchy types who were emotionally involved with what they were doing. Old Lord Marks died walking down the aisle of Marks & Spencer, checking out the store. He was engaged, immersed in every detail of the business, always trying to make something better. Now we’ve got big businesses with boards of directors and some of them have never been in a shop in their lives. There’s no engagement. They’re just corporate animals, and it’s these people in charge who kill them off. The brands just die out without personal engagement and motivation. Mediocrity ticks over, and ticking over isn’t good enough. Then failure breeds failure. I could spend my life having meetings, a meeting to have another meeting, a hundred meetings to have another thousand meetings. It’s not what I’m about. I don’t want to have to get in a queue, that’s not how I like to live. That’s why we’re 100% a private company.”
From an Interview by By Sally Vincent of the Guardian.

Start small, hone profit -making methods, discover multiplication method – fast expansion :

Bernard Lewis (now worth £1.15 Billion) – Started with 1 store – on an old bomb site, made of Corrugated iron and timber, in Holloway, slowly grew business to 15 stores called ‘Lewis Separates’, then changed name to Chelsea Girl – changed focus from product to customer, saw rapid expansion, further rapid expansion under River Island Brand - changed focus from customer to lifestyle…

Peter Jones, a builder from Cheshire, now worth £707 Million (4 times wealthier than the Dragon’s Den bloke with the same name!), started by building a first home for himself and his wife, but someone walking past the building site made an offer too good to be refused, so Peter and his fiancée Audrey, used the proceeds to build two houses on a plot down the road. His business grew slowly for some years, before he developed a focus on modern home designs for affluent buyers, at one point his customers included 20 premiership footballers. This niche focus was the key to multiplying his business and allowed Peter and his family to reap their fortune over the next decade.

Peter Hargreaves and his Business Partner, Steve Landsdown started their Investment fund from a bedroom in 1981, refined their marketing methods over first few years, and then expanded rapidly during the 90’s and have continued to grow at an astonishing rate, despite the recession, now the entrepreneurs are worth over £750m each, their company is still called Hargreaves Landsdown. These entrepreneurs have done things in the same way I would  do them – I’ll be studying and emulating their methods over the next 12 months… I’ll keep you posted!

1. 2.  Buy a business that’s gone bust ->

Rebuild it and sell it for your first fortune.

This is a classic strategy for the Recession… ideally suited to the UK economy right now!

Michael Ashcroft, now Lord Ashcroft, worth £1.3 Bn, after a few years working for a cleaning services company, saw another cleaning company going into administration. Michael, aged 28 took the opportunity to pick up a bargain. For just £1, he bought  the loss making company with its 1000 employees.

With a £15,000 bank loan he worked to turn the company around, selling it just three years later for £1.3 million. This provided the seed capital for more acquisitions, which ultimately produced his vast wealth.

Graham Kirkham, now Baron Kirkham rented a room above a snooker hall in Carcroft, Yorkshire, and started making furniture upstairs and retailing it downstairs. After a few years, he saw an opportunity when Direct Furniture Supplies, the biggest wholesaler in the North of England went bust with debts of over £900,000 on turnover of £3m.  He bought the company for a song, turned it around, and renamed it DFS, now the biggest contributor to his £1 Billion Fortune.

Bernie Ecclestone, aged 41 raised £100,000 from savings, loans and a mortgage and bought an ailing Formula 1 Team from a colleague in the business.  He didn’t sell the Team for fifteen years (for £3m), but ownership of the Team was his ticket to forming the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) with several partners in the Formula 1 industry. Aged 45, he became involved in negotiating the sport’s TV rights which became the primary source of his £2.5 bn Fortune.

Philip Green – Borrowed £20,000 to buy a container load of jeans – doubled his money, giving him the seed capital for a project to buy the clothes stock of ten designer labels that had gone into receivership. He bought a shop in Bond Street, in 6 weeks sold the lot, then sold the shop, making his first £250k… From this point he focussed on failing clothes retailers, turned them around with his own retail marketing system and then sold them to build his fortune.

1. 3.  Create Seed Capital ->

Then buy into a New Growth Area

Joe Lewis – now has a fortune of £2.8bn, he took over his father’s East London catering business, transformed it by targeting wealthy American Tourists, with luxury goods, then sold the business to provide seed capital for his start up in the Foreign Exchange Markets, helped by his mentor, George Soros. He grew this Forex Business for 20 years before selling up to make his fortune and move to the Bahamas!

Sir James Dyson, approached all the major vacuum cleaner manufacturers, who rejected his ‘bagless’ cleaner – they were concerned about the loss of income from consumables. So instead he did it himself – he started by getting his Vacuum Cleaners built by contract manufacturers and selling them in Japan to wealthy customers for £2000 each. This gave him the seed capital to start his own manufacturing facility in the UK. The UK Factory gave him a lower cost base and marketing advantages over the big institutions in his industry (like Hoover), and helped him to grow his business to one of the biggest Vacuum Cleaner brands in the world.

Douglas and Dame Mary Perkins took a 15 years to build their first small Chain of opticians around Bristol which they sold in 1980 for £2m. This provided the Seed Capital they needed to start Specsavers, now the largest privately owned opticians in the world, which now has over 1,900 stores and a turnover of over £2 Billion.

How will you make Your Fortune?

So your own fortune, (yes – YOURS!), will most likely be found within one of these structures:

a. Take one business, find the marketing sweet spot , and multiply your sales!

b. Search the plethora of failing businesses to find one you can buy cheap and turn around.

c. Work hard, save money or sell your small business to create a pot of seed capital, then take that money and invest in your chosen fast growth sector.

(Congratulations! You’ve already shown some of the character traits of a Millionaire, just by reading this report to the end!)

You’re probably thinking – “can it be that simple?”, well the honest answer is No – there’s quite a lot more to it. But the great thing is,  you can do it – anyone can… it’s just like baking a cake – add the right ingredients, stir it up, bake it for a while and you’ll have a fortune!

My job is to provide you with the list of ingredients that you need to put into your mixture…. Show you exactly where to start on your mission and then to accelerate your sales growth and wealth creation within your chosen strategy.

The next report for you to read is 5 Key Characteristics (which you can develop!)  for budding Multi Millionaires.

Charlie Wynne

Business 1 Million  Your Quickest Route to a Million Sales

www.business1million.co.uk

Napoleon Hill was commissioned by Steel Magnate, Andrew Carnegie to study 500 of the richest people in America to discover the Secret, the Magic Formula that made Carnegie and his friends their stupendous fortunes, the objective was to share this system with everyone who was interested -so we can follow the step by step instructions and make our own pile of gold.

After 20 years, Napoleon Hill had identified 20 fairly vague and wishy washy characteristics. To find them, you have to wade through the slightly antiquated chapters of his book ‘Think and Grow Rich’.

Instead of taking this long and unproductive approach to find the truth, which ultimately left Hill in poverty, I have taken just a few days to study, in depth, the top 100 richest people in the UK – in search of the most common, concrete strategies; clear paths that they have followed – so you can build these into your own plan for building your fortune.

Of the Richest 100 in the UK, we can immediately weed out 43 who Inherited their wealth or were born as members of the Aristocracy. You can also ignore the millionaires who gained it more by luck than judgement (like Mahdi al-Tajir who made his first fortune by being head of Customs in Dubai) and there’s no point in looking closely at those who were just in the right place at the right time, like the Russian Oligarchs who made their dubious fortunes from the privatisation of Russian State Utilities, even though I recognise these people are still entrepreneurs, making the best of the opportunities they created or discovered.

There are 70 Hedge Fund Managers in the top 1000 richest in the UK, making this one of the most likely career paths to millionaire status. I doff my cap to all these people and especially to the 3 Hedge Fund Managers who reside in the top 100, they are hugely successful entrepreneurs – who have taken to heart one of the reoccurring keys to creating wealth: ‘Put Yourself In Front of the Money’… But Wealth Creation in the Hedge Fund business should be the subject of a more detailed separate report. In this briefing document, we’ll stay focused on the entrepreneurial paths to enormous wealth, that you are more likely to feel are within your grasp, without having to pass exams or gain qualifications to get started.

Incidentally, while we are thinking about ‘putting yourself in front of the money’, Lily Watkins, daughter of a British railway engineer, made her Billion dollar fortune over 4 marriages; she divorced her first husband, the second committed suicide, the third divorced her and the fourth died in a house fire… perhaps we should mention ‘choosing your partners carefully’ as a key to wealth (or not losing it!)….

But the real focus of this report is on the 48 true, from scratch, self-made entrepreneurs who have gained their places in the top 100 through their own wit and hard work. They started life just like you and I, with a random pack of cards; some poor, some middle class, most of them not particularly beautiful or handsome (you can enjoy the fact that you are probably better looking than the majority of the richest people in the UK!), some with university degrees, several who left school at 16 with no qualifications, many of them are moderately overweight (not enough to make this a requirement for budding rich list entrants!), skin colour and hair colour just don’t matter when it comes to wealth!

But there are three concrete strategies; methods for creating and multiplying wealth – that do appear in almost every case. There are, of course, many common tactics – detailed methods – used by the super-rich that we’ll be defining in other reports – but here we’ll just look at the three overarching strategies that just about all of these 48 richest UK self-made entrepreneurs used to build their fortunes.

2. No need to be outgoing personality / classical salesman
There are a few salesmen in the list, like John Hargreave who started out as a market trader selling M&S seconds before setting up his first Matalan store in Preston in 1985 – the chain has had a few ups and downs, but is still worth over £1.3bn to Hargreave and his family.

Even the most flamboyant characters in the UK’s 100 Richest people will tell you that they studied hard to learn how to talk on camera and honed their public persona…
– Richard Branson was by no means a natural public figure. He pushed himself in front of the camera because he realised that was good for business. Most of the self made entrepreneurs are not natural limelight seekers.
I’m going to skip through the next 6 myths, just so we can get to the meat of this report sooner….

3. No need to be a computer wiz, there’s fair share of Luddites in the top 100, people who are quite open about their aversion to new technology…
4. You don’t need the powers of prophesy – to see into the future – many of the businesses that made the fortunes of people in the top 100 are nothing new – just reinventions or tweaks to existing ideas and commercial ventures that tip the balance to turn them into financial powerhouses.
5. No need to have a perfect family life, many of the top 100 have chaotic home lives – although they seem to calm with age…
6. No need for capital, 40% of the top 100 started with zero capital…
7. No need for family history of business – just as many disasters as successes – being born into a family business can be a great advantage, but even more families have dropped from the top 100 in the second or third generation. Hans Rausing and his family, inherited the Tetra Pak empire – built on the 0.5p per milk carton over half a century… the money still comes piling in, but the family life takes the edge of the financial success with scandal over Drug addiction and murder….

So let’s get on to the key skills you need to be a successful entrepreneur

Skills of an entrepreneur: On the surface, the richest people in the UK appear to be a pretty diverse bunch – thin, fat and mildly plump; many old, antique and toothless, but some quite youthful, many with more hair than me…. some even more bald (barely possible!)…

But looking below the surface, there are six key skill sets that almost all have acquired to enable them to achieve the astonishing cash success, that means that they can order any meal that they desire at any time of day, they can do anything they want to do, drive any car they want to drive and live anywhere they want to live….

1. The first skill found in the UK richest, from-scratch, multi-millionaires, is, wait for it…. Da Daaaah…. an Enquiring Mind. Yup, they all spent their early years in business looking for the system, the model to take them to success. They recognised and believed that there is a method to it. Almost without exception they took existing successful business models and duplicated that success in their chosen market.

2. Focus on the marketing. Even the engineers in the top 100, like Sir James Dyson (£1.4bn from Dyson Vacuum Cleaners) and Sir Terry Mathews (£1bn from Mitel Telephone Systems), recognised the importance of Marketing. They made it their job to totally understand the feelings, emotions and desires that bring their customers to life. And to discover and develop efficient processes to connect with those customers and satisfy their needs.

3. Take calculated risk. Another way of looking at this is the acceptance of failure as a step closer to success. There are countless examples of tests that they have run in the start up years. The Barclay Brothers, now worth £2.25 Billion who started out by Painting and Decorating in East London, rented a shop in Kensington called Candy Corner, but after a couple of years they were made bankrupt for not paying the rent… Within two years they’d paid off their debts and the bankruptcy was reversed. They were free to start a new business and began to build their fortune.

4. Mentors and Mastermind Groups – tap into ‘mastermind’. Anyone who’s tried it will understand the power of talking through ideas with other people with similar goals.
The Barclay Brothers were closely connected with the Tetra Pak founders – Hans Rausing and his family, and they met regularly with Tom Hunter (a Sports Shoe Millionnaire) to talk through and develop ideas.
Mahdi al-Tajir was mentored by Mohammed Al Fayed, who helped him to raise £1m for one of his early ventures.
Joe Lewis linked himself to George Soros, who introduced him to the idea of a Foreign Exchange business – which is how he made his £2.8 billion fortune.
Lord Ashcroft was inspired by and met regularly with David Wickens, owner of Lotus Cars who helped to guide and drive him forward in the early days.
Sir Terry Matthews who created Mitel tone-based telephone receivers was good friends with Kent Plumley, the Venture Capitalist, who helped him work out how to finance the early stages of his empire.
Others, like Sir Philip Green, found their inspiration from history and books, reading about the early pioneers of retail, that helped him develop the “Theatre of Retail” concept that runs through many of Green’s successes.

5. Decisive. These people at the top of the wealth food chain in the UK are not wishy washy. None of them meander through life waiting to see what might happen. They set themselves goals, actively seek out the opportunities, weigh up the benefits and the risks, make a decision which to go for and then give it a go… Richard Desmond started around 40 specialist magazines with minor successes, that allowed him to buy Penthouse and start Asian Babes, before really accelerating his business with OK Magazine, the Daily Express and other tabloids.
Peter and Denise Coates borrowed £15m to launch their online betting empire, but they’d taken many smaller steps building their Bet365 high street chain to get to this point.

6. Think beyond the boundaries. Many of us enjoy having a few rules – they can make us feel secure – so we embellish and even create imaginary lines in the sand to govern many of the things we do.
The folk who sit in the Top 100 UK Rich List seem to have a healthy disregard for the law, and conventions. Even seem to enjoy pushing the boundaries and challenging the law.
Jon Hunt, founder of Foxtons Estate Agents, is now worth £850m, broke the rules in his industry by working weekends and evenings. He recognised that house buyers don’t want to take time off work to look round houses.
Ajay Kalsi who made his fortune in Oil Exploration had a logistics issue to solve, when he bought some equipment from an ailing competitor. His neighbours woke to see a huge oil rig sitting in his back yard – it remained there for a few weeks, before being deployed on the next job…
Richard Branson tells a story about one of his early ventures importing music from Europe, he was caught trying to circumnavigate Customs and Excise and spent a night in jail before being bailed out by his mum!

You can develop the six money spinning skills sets exhibited by the UK’s top wealth mongers, just by understanding what they are…

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Ralph Walo Emerson

Charlie Wynne
Business 1Million
Your Quickest Route to 1 Million Sales