PositiveMindWealth.com

Born into post war poverty in 1949 in Dalmuir, just west of Glasgow in Scotland, Duncan’s childhood was blighted by a lack of money. He describes his own family as being ‘simply poor’ and vividly recalls his family being too poor to even afford to buy him an ice-cream when the local ice cream van was on its rounds.

In fact more often than not, as a child he went without and upon asking his parents why they couldn’t buy new toys like the neighbours the phrase that became emblazoned on his memory was ‘because we were poor’. In fact to illustrate the point further, upon starting his middle school days he was one of only two children he turned up on the first day without a school uniform as it had been too expensive for his family to afford!

From this humble background on a council estate, however, emerged a self-made multi-millionaire serial entrepreneur and businessman who was to go on to earn an OBE, raise incredible amounts of money for charity and become a household name as a television business expert/investor (Sunday Times Rich list 2010 profiles Duncan). It wasn’t an easy route to the top and indeed he showed no real signs of the great things to come until he had turned thirty.

After leaving school with no qualifications he followed his father into the armed service but whilst his father had been in the army he joined up with Royal Navy in 1964 to fuel his craving for excitement and adventure. Unfortunately after a few short years, Duncan’s inability to adhere well to taking orders and the disciplined life, led him to be dishonourably discharged after one final instance when he tried to throw his lieutenant overboard.

Duncan served 9 months in a military detention centre following his court marshalling and then returned to Scotland and Clydebank. What followed was a string of different jobs working mainly as a repairer of sorts, repairing everything from tractors to forklift trucks. At this time there was the tragic death of his sister who died from a suspected brain tumour just days after flying to Canada where she was due to start a new life. This event affected him (and all of his family) a great deal and the following years proved to be very difficult with Duncan picking up convictions for being drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest.

“The tragic death of my sister had taught me that life was precious and can be short.”

A further string of repair, fitting and welding jobs led him south, although it was at his point that he came to some sort of realisation.

“I quit and decided I had to make some changes. I knew it was all down to me: I would be the catalyst; I was the only one who could make it happen. My instincts told me that I would know the right opportunity when I came across it.”

Following his desire to change his life he followed his instincts and ended up on the isle of Jersey and soon found himself enjoying the relaxed holiday lifestyle and made his money working in the local bars and working a taxi. Finally he happened upon the idea of selling ice-cream and bought himself an ice cream van. Initially working from just the one van he learnt the ebbs and flows of business by instinct and trial and error and this he believes was what laid the foundations of his future business success.

“I got to know myself, my strengths and my capabilities. I also got to like and believe in myself., and the idle notion that one day I might someday start a business began fermenting into quite a powerful brew. What was once a dream was becoming an intention.”

After building the ice cream business, through spotting and taking easy opportunities (like purchasing vans at the end of the season and securing licenses for areas with large amounts of foot traffic next to parks) he managed to generate annual turnovers in excess of £300,000 a year.

However, the long hours and his new family life weren’t the greatest mix and so he sold his Ice-cream van business for £28,000 and started looking for his next opportunity. At around that time favourable laws were introduced for those people wishing to build care homes for the elderly. The Thatcher government would pay £140s per week for every elderly person being looked after. This opportunity which was announced to the public through the papers is just what Duncan was looking for and so he set about building his first care home satisfied that the government would be reliable payers!

His first plot of land was a real find though and his instinct told him it was the right spot:

“On my way to the coffee shop I passed an estate agent, and in the window was a plot of land for sale. If it had been a movie, that card in the window would have started glowing, the music would have started up and my eyes would have bulged”.

Financing the building was a challenge in itself though, he had to sell his car, remortgage his house and max out his credit cards in order to get the care home built, clearly he saw this as a worthy investment despite the risk involved. Duncan clearly had great vision and tons of self-belief.

“There wasn’t a day I wasn’t happy to get out of bed and get to work.”

This first care home was finally opened and indeed it was one of the first care homes in the UK to be one person per room. This is however where Duncan’s hunger, desire and serial entrepreneurial instinct kicked in. Immediately upon opening this care home he set about using this one as leverage to build a second and then a third and fourth. His reasoning seemed to be why wouldn’t you buy something that makes money?

“Some people would have been happy with just one nursing home, but all I could say was onwards and upwards.”

Listen to Duncan telling his own story below:

One of the most enlightening parts of working with the elderly was the insights he gained into life. One common comment from many guests was:

“Make the most of every minute, you’re a young man and you have no idea how quickly time passes.”

So, after 5 years in the care home game, he had grown his business to 9 care homes and 428 registered beds and he began to consider the prospect of floating his business on the stock exchange despite knowing nothing about the process involved which would enable him to release some of the companies equity . Through persistence and tenacity, he finally managed to float the business on the Londond stockmexchange in May 1992 and thus netted himself a £500,000 cash payout and the companies total share value was at around the 20 million pound mark with Duncan owning at least 70% of those.

After his success with ice cream vans and care homes he then set his sights on other such service related opportunities including hotels and health clubs (Bannatyne Health Clubs). It was whilst he was on holiday working-out that the idea of starting health clubs got into his system and in true Bannatyne fashion things happened pretty quickly. These days the Bannatyne Health club chain has over 60 branches all over the UK with over 180,000 members and is the largest independently owned health club operator in the UK.

In recent years his remarkable story has seen him feature as a Dragon in the UK hit television series: Dragons Den (sample episode). His forthright manner, cheeky humour and sound advice have led him to become a popular television personality and he has invested in many a fellow entrepreneurs ideas through the show.

Not so well known is the amount of charity work (Duncan’s personal website) he has done and the amount of money he has raised for charity. Romania is where a lot of his efforts and money have been channelled into. Of course, this is the great reward of being wealthy, you can go onto contribute to society and live the life you really want to lead and this is what Duncan appears to be doing up until this very day.

The title of his autobiography ‘Anyone Can Do It’ where all the above quotes come from is truly an inspirational read, tracing his early years of lack and poverty right through to his meteoric rise to the top. Can anyone do it? What do you think?

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