There are people in this world that work hard to achieve success in life; there are others that will choose to ride on the tailcoats of others.
There are some people in business that over the years have put the time, effort and dedication into their business, like myself, and both myself and others like me have earned the right to spend their days on the golf course, holidaying four five times a year, enjoying long lunches etc, unfortunately there are other so called “businessmen” that are enjoying these pleasures on other peoples money.
In the past “glory” years I have often compared myself to other business men around me and to be honest have questioned what I was doing wrong.
For those of you that know me this will come as no surprise, but for those of you that don’t., I am a workaholic, working a 5 ½ day week from 9am right through until the evening, often sacrificing time with my loved ones.
Since the recession it has now all become clear that I was not doing anything wrong, all these “businessmen” driving around in their flash fast cars, boats and holidaying all over the world were doing it all with other peoples money.
These “businessmen” were able to paint a nice shiny picture of business that appears to be glamorous, be it a night club, titty bar or a property development, investors want to be able to go past the big hoardings outside a building site and say that they have £2 Million invested in that, drink in “their” bar etc.
In the case of property development when the site is finally finished these days there is nothing left as profit for any investor, the business man who you have invested in has already taken the profit from the build either to fulfil other investors needs for money returned or to fund their own lifestyle…so when the property market was brought to its knees, these building sites almost instantly were in negative equity.
These so called businessmen were relying on the property market rising 15 – 20% a year, how did they ever think that this sort of increase was going to be sustainable?
Back in the 70’s a property development could have possible been made up of 35% build, 35% site and 30% profit, in today’s market you are lucky to get 50% site, 40% build and 10% profit.
These investors have lost their money, and if they thought it was a safe investment they were wrong, the banks had the 1st charge over all these property developments, and the banks would have been lucky to get their money back, let alone anything left for investors, their 2nd charge was not worth the paper that it was written on
These property developers have gone bankrupt for crazy figures, £30-£40 Millions, how can it go that wrong?!
For my own businesses I have monthly accounts and reports, which show me if I was down even £500 from one month to the next.
My businesses are solid, and if they are not earning a substantial profit then I don’t take a wage from it until it is running full steam ahead.
An old acquaintance of mine did advise me that the reason any investor would not be interested in me or my businesses is because there is no glamour, and even though he has taken the banks and numerous investors for millions time and time again, without any true knowledge of the market place he is in, I am sure that there are investors out there that will continue to invest in his shiny suits, fast cars and fancy holidays.
Despite the lack of glamour in my workplace I have the fast cars, fancy holidays and yes even shiny suits, but I have bought these with my own hard earned money!
When I was in the construction industry I was very hands on, business owner that was on site every day, mucking in with the brick layers, the carpenters, jumping into the diggers, unloading lorries, operating cranes and getting on with what ever needed to be done, along with controlling all the workers on sites. At the time I knew exactly what was spent and where, and these weren’t small projects, I had up to 300 contractors on sites at any one time.
I have never been a person to paint a false, albeit, glamorous picture to get money from outside investors.
It sounds like I am having a gripe , which I am, if someone was to lend me a £5 million I would be able to work it and turn it into more millions, I was able to do this with a £10k investment just think what I could do …
I would buy businesses that have a turnover but are not making money and turn them around into profit making businesses, one of the first things to do would be to clear all the non productive workers.
I hope that all these investors have learnt a valuable if not costly lesson with their investments over the last few years.
I have heard that some of these “property developers” have now changed direction and called themselves “consultants”, this amazes me, how can they offer business advice when they have not got a clue themselves.
If you are an investor and want sure fired returns on your money, then give me a call, I know from my experience that I can make millions from nothing!