3 Things I Learned from the Billionaire Peter Hargreaves - The Billion Dollar Secret
Peter Hargreaves is an English billionaire and founder of Hargreaves Lansdown. He is the only person in history who built an FTSE 100 company (one of the 100 biggest British companies) without borrowing or acquisitions. In this video I talk about what I have learned from him.
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Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/BillionairePal
Follow me on steemit: https://steemit.com/@billionairepal
And read the blog where I test the limits of human capabilities: http://nolimits.co
Buy the book "Ready, Set, Go!" that I have co-authored with Brian Tracy:
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Special-Entrepreneurs-Professionals-ebook/dp/B078WZXJDW/
Hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Go-Nick-Nanton/dp/0999171402/
Get free chapter of my upcoming book about billionaire thinking: http://TheBillionDollarSecret.com
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hi. Today from London. Today we will talk about what I learned from Peter Hargreaves, an English billionaire. See you in the next part.
[Music]
What I learned from Peter Hargreaves.
At first, who is Peter Hargreaves?
Peter Hargreaves is an English billionaire that I interviewed in UK several years ago for my book "The Billion Dollar Secret"
I picked his brain about his success methods; about what made him so extremely successful in business.
Peter Hargreaves is probably the only person who managed to build an FTSE 100 company without borrowing and acquisitions.
He built the largest private financial service in the UK - Hargreaves Lansdown.
They have right now around 100 billion dollar under management. And he built all that without any debt. He never took debt for his company.
And he never acquired any other company and became so outrageously big in business.
Now, what I have learnt from Peter.
First thing I lerned from Peter Hargreaves is his frugality. Many people have this conception about billionaires that they lead lavish lives.
They just sit there and think how they spend all their wealth. How they should spend all that money. What should they do with that money. How o indulge life.
So, people have this misconception that billionaires spend time on spending money or spend time on thinking how to spend money.
In reality many billionaires and most of the self-made billionaires I have interviewed lead a rather humble and frugal life.
And great exapmle for that is Peter Hargreaves.
Peter Hargreaves, when I interviewed him... he wasn't driving Ferrari or Lambo. He wasn't even driving a Porsche, Land Rover or Mercedes.
No! He was driving an 8 years old Toyota Prius because he said he didn't need any better car and this car is economic. It doesn't consume a lot of fuel.
So, this is just a perfect car for him and there are no company cars in his company. Nobody uses a company car. This is frugality.
And he raised his children in the same spirit of frugality. For example, when his daughter moved to London and rented an apartment...
She was following him and switching off the lights to save the energy. This is how he raised his children.
But I will tell you a story that will astound you about this frugality in business.
So, when his company was young... It was early days. Of course, there was no Internet, there was no email...
So, all the offers they were sending, they were sending via post mail service. And every day they were sending out and receiving back thousands of letters.
So, what they did was to check the stamps. And if there were stamps that they could use again, they were using vapor to get these stamps from the return mail
To use them for the mail they were sending.
So, it was at the beginning of the company, when they had to save every penny.
But Peter had also a frugal friend who was in a crane rental business and 10-20 years later Peter revealed what they were doing about these stamps to friend
And he asked this friend "So were you doing that at the beginning?"
And friend said "Are you stupid? We are still doing that!".
And you may ask yourself... Well, it doesn't make sense because it actually costs more to scan all these letters and to look if you can use it to vapor it away
And to use it for your letters. It doesn't make economic sense because you pay the people more for the work to do that than the stamp costs.
But this is something about frugality in business, about making people aware that you want to save money and that you don't spend money on unnecessary things
That you don't throw money away. And this is the same with lights in the restrooms, that you switch them off, and so on...
There are so many spots in your company and in your private life when you unnecessarily spend money.
And this is just to make aware yourself and the people in your company, your employees about these things; to be aware of these things.
This was the first thing I learned from Peter.
The second thing I learned from Peter was to know your customer.
Peter built private investment service, a self-serve service for private people for investing in stocks, in bonds, funds and in other investment vehicles.
And why was he so successful in that business? Because he says he always exactly knew what customer needed.
Why did he know so well what his customers needed?
Well, he was investing himself since he was 10. When he was 10 he was investing with his mother's name.
His mother set up an investment account and he was using his pocket money to invest in different vehicles - in stocks, bonds, in other investment opportunities
And he exactly understood what turned on the investors, how investors thought and what would be attractive for investors
What would they need to operate. How they think, how they perceive. The different either investment opportunities, but also the tools.
What tools they need to invest. What functionalities they need in order to be effective or efficient in what they do.
So, that's why he was able to build such a great company. That's why he was able to acquire so many customers
And became the number one investment service in the UK. As I said, 120 billion dollars under management right now.
So outrageously big company, outrageously big assets.
So, when you are in business, essential thing is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer to understand his perspective,
To look at what you do and what you provide. To look at your service, look at your business from the perspective of the customer
And exactly understand how he perceives it, how he thinks and what he needs.
If you are able to find out or to know what your customer needs, then you are able, off course, to satisfy his needs and to take money for that.
And the better you satisfy your customer needs, the more satisfied your customers are, the more sustainable and profitable your business is.
And this knowing what your customer needs Peter Hargreaves considers his success secret. This is the secret for his success.
He told me nobody in the industry, nobody of his competitors knew so well what customers, what investors needed as he did.
This was his main competitive adventage.
The third thing that I learned from Peter Hargreaves is to love what you do. What Peter Hargreaves told me was that he wasn't good at many things.
He wasn't good at sport, he wasn't good at other aspects of life. He wasn't particularly good.
But what he found he was good, and what he really liked and what he was excited about was business.
Especially the investment industry. Investing.
And as I told you before, he was investing since he was 10. And he was so excited about that. He told me his work was like a hobby.
It was a pleasure for him to come to work. So, when you love what you do you never actually work.
It is like an exciting journey, like doing what you love all the time and that's why you have this motivation.
That's why you have then this passion and you are able to overcome all these obstacles that you have a completely different attitude to your business
To your industry because this is what you love. This is what excites you and it's just fun for you to come to your business
To do your business and to deal with your industry, with your customers, with your business partners, with your suppliers
And this gives you also an edge, an adventage over your competitors.
And Peter told me about a friend of him, a compeetitor, a business friend who was also in the same business but he wasn't doing his business for fun
He was doing it for money and for some time it looks like this friend would be more successful than him
But in the long-term it turned out. It's not sustainable. This friend's business went down. The friend went bankrupt.
And Peter became a billionaire. Why?
Because he had this love for what he did for his industry, for the business itself and especially for the investment business
And that's what made his business sustainable. That's what made him so successful.
So, these 3 things I wanted to share you today. Of course, I learned a lot more from Peter Hargreaves about success.
All these things I share in my upcoming book "The Billion Dollar Secret".
If you want to read the free chapter of that book, there is a link below. To get a free chapter, go to www.thebilliondollarsecret.com and get the free chapter
If you liked this video, give me a thumb up. If not, of course, thumb down. Don't forget to subscribe. I talk here a lot about self-made billionaires.
How they think and act. What in their personalities, what in their thinking, in their lives made them so outrageously successful in business.
Of course I talk also about other things like money, like economy, like doing impossible things in your life and business.
So, share this video with your friends, with your loved ones. One day they will thank you for that.
What do you think about these topics? What is your perspective? What is you experience? What are other anegdotes you may know about Peter Hargreaves?
Share it with us in the comments below. If you liked this video, you will like my other videos. I invite you to watch them.
That's it for today from London. I wish you a fantastic day today! Let's do something extraordinary today!
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