Singing Pig

chatanooga:

-How far did you pursue formal education? BSc Hon engineering
-Do you own your own business or do you hold down a job? Both until December 2007.
-If you did have a job how long were you in it for? 29 years, but no job lasted longer than 6 years
-What was the pivotal event that changed your perspective? Being bankrupt at the age of 26
-How did you learn about making money? Continuously throughout life from age of 14
-When did you do your first property deal? 1993
-Did you make your starting capital from property deal or elsewhere? Elsewhere

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David Beard invited me to post here, as a new member.  This is copied and pasted from another forum:

 About me.
I am Gerry Pridham. I was born in Ashton-u-Lyne and my parents took me to Australia when I was 8, returning to the UK when I was 16. I graduated from Imperial College in London as an engineer, and have lived in seven countries and worked in countless more.

I became self employed at the age of 26 and after a business failure carried a debt the size of a semi-detached house for the next five years until I got the opportunity to work overseas again.

This millenium has been very kind to my family. We came to the UK for the children's education. After six months, I joined a FTSE100 company as a contractor for three months and ended up staying for seven years!

My wife and I own three businesses (UK, Dubai, Spain). We have spent most of 2006 and 2007 rapidly building a UK and overseas property portfolio. We intend to maximize the asset value of that portfolio during 2008, since we have already reached about 80% of our target.

What I am looking for from this forum.
Like many of you who will join this forum, I have been inspired recently by reading about how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results. I don't communicate well with negative people, but spend a great deal of time trying to motivate people to be positive in their outlook. I thrive in the company of entrepreneurs, who motivate me to step up to the next level. I look forward to communicating with like minded people with a positive outlook on life.

What do I have to offer others on this forum?
I have over twenty years of experience in business planning, both as a consultant for corporations, and as an individual responsible for the continuing success of our own private companies. I am told by my peers that I have excellent planning and execution skills in a wide range of businesses. I have managed over 240 projects during the past ten years, ranging from 3 days to 12 months.
I am a Chair of Governors of an extraordinary Grammar school in the independent sector, and my personal interest in this respect is participating in adding value to the education of young people. This school is extraordinary because its intake has a high proportion of pupils with special needs, which builds enormous self-confidence in the cohort who achieve much higher grades on exit than the national average.
I am passionate about truth, standards and extraordinary performance achievable by otherwise ordinary folk.

Dear SP moderators, members and readers,

I hope you read this posting in excellent health and spirit.

I am writing this posting after an Invite from David Beard, so thank you for your welcome and I think that you guys have developed a very nice environment of mutual respect and mutually beneficial relationship where you could trade ideas, advice and also wealth. Therefore I congratulate the hard work and effort that it took the founding members and the moderators to achieve this vision.

My purpose here is to be able to inspire others to generate, develop and distribute wealth...  To be able share ideas and methods that I have found bring success time and time again... To be able to improve my own processes and systems by experimenting with others people’s ideas and implementing them and taking them into the next level... ie to it better.

This most be obvious to the regular members that I am a new member so let me introduce myself, my name is Syed Rahman, and I am the chief Executive Director of a multinational and multimillion pound company called Alternative Finance Group. I myself would not claim to be a multimillionaire however I have generated millions and spent million of pounds in various projects from my early years of life. I come from a middle-class family and had education in the public schools and have achieved MBA and am also a qualified as management accountant by profession, I say by profession because my career has not been in the fields of accounts, at the age of 17, I was the youngest manager shift manager at in the history McDonalds, UK (I was working whilst studying at college). I then moved into working for House of Fraser as merchandise manager but I had to leave the Manchester branch as I went to study in Coventry University (BA Business Studies), however from my success at work the company wanted to retain my services, so received offer from HQ to become one of its business development consultants, thus start of my career as a business and management consultant. Whilst I was working with House of Fraser, I found myself being put of loan to other firms to do projects, including once for the Department of Transportation for white paper and feasibility studies on 'the congestion charge' in London (I know that many of by now are not very fond of me... but let me say that the decision to have congestion charge system was already made two years prior and even if I didn’t work on the project, there was another 7 consultants under me working on the project, so if I didn’t then they would have taken the lead and trust me... these private school boys are very mean cos their pockets are deep but their hands are very short... one thing I did manage with my lead on the project, is I made sure that the congestion charge for the working people started at £5... can you believe that these boys were thinking about twenty odd quid... also forced a study on locals and made sure that locals and disabled has exemptions... sorry, I diverted... but so many people ask me why? what I say is that.. had I still been around.. I could have done some consultation on speed cameras and make sure we pay a fiver and not sixty odd quid - lol), Hope you don’t feel too bad now...

So moving on about my career...

At university, on my final year in the degree (I was about 21 years old) during the dot.com boom... I started an online mobile phone business. The business was very simple... it was personalised phones (do you guys remeber the black brick.. when all the phones looked the same... at that time, the most unique phone was the banana phone... anyways what I did with the phones was to take the covers off and dip with into plastic dye (thus achieving different colours... and also for extra price you could have pictures/photos of your choice thermal printed on your phone covers... the most popular at that time was pokemon, Spice girls, Titanic and Leonardo DiCaprio). At the peak of the business I had eleven students (most of them my mates) working from our Uni business park and also we were supplying to several countries abroad and our biggest orders were coming from HK and Singapore.

I then found myself in a legal suit with Nokia, as they claimed that since I was re-labling their phones (basically an engraved gold plate was super-glued on-top their Nokia logo) and also my company sounded very similar to theirs... so in the court-day, few black suited and black booted lawyers flew - in to sue for every dime I every earned. I turned up in the court with my jeans as I had an exam just before the session and didn’t have time to get changed (mind you... I was always smartly dressed especially with the Uni life-style and if you don’t know what I am talking about then you’ve really missed out)... anyways, I was offered the in-court lawyer to represent me as I didn’t have my own, not that I couldn’t afford to but it was cos I was so busy with my final year exams, thesis (my honors project) and also the business, also didn’t think that Nokia was gonna send a team of lawyers against a harmless student (lol).

After a long – session of what it seems international relations dispute with UN speeches made by each other lawyers present, I was thinking to myself, “wow… talk about highly paid lawyers selling their souls to the devil”… and it was difficult not to be convinced that I didn’t commit some crime deserving of capital punishment. (Mind you, I have some friends who are lawyers and they are really nice people, with integrity and honor… which goes to show that not all lawyers sells their souls, and thanks God for that). Anyways, the Judge was really nice guy; I remember looking at him thinking to myself… I must be having a bad day cos this Judge looks mean and nasty, how wrong I was… the Judge was a fair man, with balanced character… he was firm but fair and that’s what I call Justice. The Judge found in my favor as he found the actions by Nokia to be excessive and also because I had Trade-marked by brands and logos, which showed that I was not being malicious or infringing. The Judge closed the session with advised us to come to a settlement with our American cousins.

As we came outside the court-room, it was by now 4.30pm, I asked the visiting lawyers if they had eaten as we all had to skip lunch. So I invited them to lunch on me, and took them to a really nice restaurant, where we got talking and I gota say, they were really nice people outside the court, if you don’t know this… Lawyers do have a good sense of humor…

I took the opportunity to ask them what they wanted… and basically they didn’t want to go empty handed, they wanted to come to an arrangement… so I asked them to make an offer. Believe me when I say this, the offer they made far exceeded what I expected… maybe it was the lunch… or maybe it was the jokes… or maybe it was the drinks… whatever it was, it worked quite well, as I sold my Brands to Nokia, I sold the Business to a friend of mine, and I sold the stocks in auction to pay off all the expenses.

After my exams and a good holiday break, I decided to start the next business, which was to develop and launch a pioneering TV channel. I knew nothing about TV as I didn’t watch TV often and I had no experience in the business. So I set myself a target of understanding the industry, networking and developing a Business Plan. When I told about my ideas to my friends and family, they simply laughed at me, and thought that I had lost it. It was a long-term ambition and I was determined and driven… with a clear vision and a motivated mission, as my idea was to develop a TV channel with a purpose, a media with morality. I developed a business plan, which I submitted to a Government scheme for enterprise, and I was awarded as the best business plan award by the European Union grant scheme in association with 16 universities. I received this award from over 15,000 entries that they had received and from the 150 business that was presented on the day, only 10 enterprises were awarded and out of them I had received the top prize. However, let me say this, this achievement was not mine, it was my team… the only work that I did was to develop an award winning team and they did the rest. This gave us credibility in the industry and we had found people to be supportive and cooperative. Within two years, I had launched my first TV channel… however, by now I had other plans… so offered the TV channel to a management buy-out to my team, as I felt that they were most deserving of this, but I did this by rising investments from private investors, with the condition that the investors would pay for the cost of the management buy-out, since the team didn’t have the money… however the investors saw the benefit of my proposition and still today they thank me for it… as they have a management that has taken ownership of the company and brought many successes to the company. Since, I have been responsible for the birth of two more TV channels and consulted on several multimedia projects.

My career in the arena of business consultancy was also taking another direction from management consultancy to corporate finance, yes; I was now in the world of corporate finance. It was an ocean full of sharks and many other very unpleasant creatures… especially the brokers, I call them the jelly-fish, cos all they need to do was come in contact with you, and you are done for. For some reason (maybe my Guardian Angel was shining down on me or maybe cos I talk before I think), the Executives and CEO’s of corporations were very fond of me, particularly when I was frank and honest with them, telling them how bad they were at business or how they could improve what they were doing (cos trust me even if your making Billions, you can still make more and do it better). I found myself doing a lot of their jobs, from negotiating deals, managing projects and hiring/firing people. By now, I had served as executive director in two Banks. I was simply spending millions of pounds of money which were not mine and I would not see a penny of it again. I was making decisions that were life changing and these decisions were made purely in the interest of profits. As I was a follower of the Prophets, I had come to a cross-road in my life were I wanted to put ‘faith back into finance’.   

I then came across group of people in the UK, who had developed a credit union, but it was a failing company, so I wanted to help them… as there were other people’s money involved, and I wanted people’s money to be safely returned to them with the returns that they were promised. To do this, I was left with a challenge of ‘doubling the money in six months’. I love challenges as it was an opportunity to achieve new heights. I had first restructured the company, which of course involved orchestrating the removal of the CEO and other executives, and then developing a business which generated revenue consistently, made profits handsomely and cut-costs with boldness. Once, the company was able to pay its investors double the profit in five years, my challenge was over… but my mission of ‘putting faith into finance’ continued….

So therefore, I setup Alternative Finance Group (AFG), a company that’s was just going to do that.  Currently, AFG has five business units, seven branches in the UK, with nationwide call centre and generates millions of pounds revenue, and distributes profits to its investors consistently year after year.  AFG has achieved market leadership in its niche and looking to expand its scope of business so that it could become a market leader in the main-stream finance and real estate industry.

I would like to come back to my original declaration that I am not a multi-millionaire, since I content myself with a company wage pack. But what I do relish is the opportunity to make a difference, especially if there is a challenge of it not been done before. The feeling and reward of making a positive difference to people’s lives can not be substituted with money, and the best and most difference you can make for people is to help them develop wealth for themselves and their families, and distribute wealth to those who can’t.  

Why did I join SP? I am currently pursuing a real-estate strategy for BMV and to see how it could be adopted and utilized for cooperative and corporate finance. Thus I have developed Alternative Property is part of the Alternative Finance Group. I will be interest in BMV portfolio particularly those 20% plus.  Secondly, I am interested in portfolios of ‘repossessed houses’, Thirdly, I have developed successful Estate Agents, with BMV orientation, so if anyone is interested in BMV Estate Agent franchise then let us know, and Finally; looking to launch a Real-Estate TV channel to sell BMV’s direct to investors and public, with online auctions (a bit like eBay), so if you wanna be a part of it, then your welcome too.

My Final thought would be for all of us to take a moment of our time, even for few seconds and ask ourselves this important question:

What is the Purpose of our Lives? (And) What is the True Success in Life?

With warmest regards your friend

Syed Rahman

Further to my post of 9th February 2005............

Update Time!! 

10th April 2008............ and even more ancient!!  :-(

Have just returned from Latvia where I am a 28% shareholder in 300 hectares (740 acres) of the most beautiful land on which we expect to have planning permission within the next 4 - 5 months for a huge golf/hotel/residential project. It's taken us 33 months to date so, by the time re-zoning etc is granted it will have taken in excess of three years........ but what an amazing three years!

So many challenges to overcome, from quietly buying up pieces of land to 'patch together' what we now own without alerting people to what we were planning or prices would have gone through the roof, to negotiating with Greenpeace and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Rural Developement over a White Tailed Sea Eagle's nest! I can't say it hasn't been both a huge amount of fun and a sharp learing curve!

We are attracting a great deal of interest from potential purchasers of the the land, once we have got the re-zoning, and expect to acheive a sales price of between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 million Euros, and that is without any marketing at all....... just the fact that the project is so big it is getting fairly well known all by itself! One of those potential purchasers is a name that every single person on this forum would know, but for obvious reasons I'm not about to announce it!  

None of us really know what it's worth as nothing of this size has been planned in Latvia before, but I guess we will know soon enough. The golf course architect, who is extremely well known in his field of expertise, keeps asking us why we are giving it away as our asking price is far too low! I hope he's right!! lol

So the past few years have been kind to me....... after the death of my wife I was quite convinced that my life was pretty much over. Now I know better!

Phil,

Brilliant update. Thanks for remembering to come back on here.   I got sidetracked with this post going right back to the start, and recognize quite a few colleagues now. Amazing what a difference four years makes in this business.

chatanooga:

I've just bought this book and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Basically its about a chap who profiled a bunch of millionaires. Most of them didn’t excel in education or have great family wealth.

I'm interested to know about the background of you SP'ers - a great deal of you seem to be very successful people.

-How far did you pursue formal education?
-Do you own your own business or do you hold down a job?
-If you did have a job how long were you in it for?
-What was the pivotal event that changed your perspective?
-How did you learn about making money?
-When did you do your first property deal?
-Did you make your starting capital from property deal or elsewhere?

I have an HND in Applied Physics with Electronics that I completed when I was 19 or so.  I later did an HND in Telematics (AKA data communications) when I was sponsored by Nortel Networks.

I have had several jobs where I basically test and fault-find things.  I've worked on boards for Civil and Military aircraft, the gearbox computer for the Challlenger 2 tank and command and control systems for Trafalgar class subs and Type 23 frigates.  The defence sector was poorly paid, so I then got into Telecommunications.  In 1999 I did a crash HND course in Telematics - 2 years study condensed into 36 weeks in the classroom and 9 weeks on-the-job training.  Unfortunately my timing wasn't brilliant - I joined Nortel in 2000 just as they started to shed their workforce!  I stayed there for over 4 years before being made redundant.  After Nortel I set-up my own Limited company and have been on a long-term contract for 2.5 with one of the suppliers on the BT21CN network.

Taking the plunge and working for myself.

I realised from an early age that money was important and there were ways to make a bit of extra money.  I did a paper round from the age of 14 and used to do gardening for neighbours.  I got into shares when at College and did a lot of "Carpetbagging" with various building societies - Woolwich, B&B, Portman etc.  My parents didn't teach me about shares etc - I took books out the library and read the newspapers.  I then saw people were making money in property.

 I bought my first flat (to live in myself) when I was 22.  My wife is South African and we also own 1ha (2.5 acres) of agricultural land just outside Gordon's Bay, which we bought 2 years ago.  We plan to go out there and develop the land (in SA this is classed as a smallholding and you can build 2 dwellings on it at present).  The council is supposed to be rezoning the land to residential this year.  I've been a bit slow off the mark with getting my first BTL property - we bought a repossessed 2 bed 2 bath penthouse flat in London this year.  Luckily we put down a 30% deposit and took a lifetime tracker mortgage at base +0.69%, so we just got in before the credit crunch bit.

Starting capital was taken as a dividend from the Company.

 
Our plan is now to sell our UK house and emigrate to South Africa towards the end of the year (provided we can find a buyer). We will develop the land in Gordon's Bay - hoping to build a big place for us with an annex containing 2 granny flats that we will rent out to tourists.  We will need to start some sort of business out there - not sure exactly what but have a few ideas.  If things work out then all well and good - if not, we have the flat in London if we need to come back to the UK.
 

I'm 22 years old and did my first property deal when I was 18 buying below market value, financing with 20% deposit saved through savings/inheritance and spending minimal £1K to refurb.

I sold up last year and made a good profit, now sitting in the same luxury apartment block as Lewis Hamilton on circa £100K of equity.

I finished my education once I'd finished college as I got a job working for Ford Motor Company (agency side) for 4 years, pricing cars and marketing, PR, events, etc. which gave me a lot of commercial experience and now working for an insurance brokerage.

Income wise, good for my age, but still not blessed with a lot of disposable income to invest.

I've just started looking into BMV property as I really want to get back into the buy-to-let market. The area I'm looking at has good yields, excellent potential for growth and I've got a good property finder, although financing seems to be the main issue at the moment.

Any suggestions for financing would be appreciated, answers on a post card or to ivimy@hotmail.com.

I left school at 15 with no qualifications and was brought up in a pretty bad area.

We never had anything but I always worked hard. I was head kitchen porter in a hotel when I was 16. Had 5 people working under me at busy times during the year. worked in loads of dead end jobs. One even putting boxes into a crushing machine for a year!

I saved up and bought my first house at 22  and then gradually built it up to 4 which, I nearly lost countless times because I was earning low wages. I never had anything spare so if it wasn't rented out id be in trouble. But I learned quickly about property going up in value.

Things got better in the last 4 or 5 years when my earnings went up through a business id built up and Ive managed to build it up to 21 properties in total by releasing eqiuity from the earl ones.

All are pretty low end but they rent out easily.

My plan is pretty simple really, 'buy as many as I can and hope for the best'. Never really been academic about the whole thing.

I know my areas so if it stacks up/ makes decent yeild, its alright with me.