Written by Tommy Stuart
I’m Scottish, born in Glasgow in 1938. I was brought up like a little readymade tramp; I won’t go into too much detail, but enough said when I tell you that when I was seven years of age I was getting myself up in the mornings and taking myself to school. (Mum and dad had gone to work in the steel works at 6am). I would find my socks to put on that had never been washed since they were bought, the sweat was so hard ground in I would have to snap off the bits I didn’t need any more and put my foot into the sock enough to turn the toe bit under — if it was turn able — so as you couldn’t see the holes that were there in the heals. I would then ram my foot into the shoe that had a cardboard bit cut out and inserted inside to cover the holes in the soles. The rest of my clothing matched my shoes and socks.
The house I lived in had nothing worth stealing and so the door was never locked. Everything of worth; which was very little; was in the pawnshop across the road; they came out of Fridays when my mum and dad got paid and went back in on Mondays. After the weekend’s celebrations.
Nothing much changed until I became 17 years of age. I took myself down to an army recruiting centre, joined up for 3 years and was sent off to fight communist terrorists in Malaya – before Singapore became independent.
I came out of the army just before my 21st birthday, I remember not even getting a birthday card from my mother or father. I packed my bags and went to live in Inverness where I started my first business with a few employees. We would knock doors and offer sewing machine demonstration hoping to make sales on easy payments. That lasted until I found one of my employees forging the agreements to get the commission from me — his antics closed me down.
I had made a friend when in the army who lived in England, I decided to go and visit him in Stockport where I have lived ever since.
Starting A Business With Nothing
When you have very little money it’s not easy to start a business. This was about 1963. All I had was determination.
At that time women wore nylon-stocking, a pair of which would just last the week; so I went around the houses where I lived knocking on doors asking to speak to the ladies of the house. I told them I had a stocking delivery service and that I would deliver to them a new pair of stockings through their letterbox every week of the correct size and shade. Crazy — I know! But it worked. I did quite well out of that and managed to become the very proud owner of my first brand new vehicle — a grey mini-van. I believed that everyone I drove past was looking at me drive this “wonderful vehicle” – as I thought – I felt really proud of my achievement.
Later on when I increased my capital, I decided to start buying clothing from importers and put it out to people who had lots of friends, or worked with a lot of people, they could sell to. They would put their own profit on top of my asking price. I called round them every week and collected my money for what they had sold — take back what they couldn’t sell and leave them some new merchandise. Another original idea and I must say it worked very well.
Now I Have A Little Money
I now started selling into shops — who would have though it possible to buy from an importer and sell into shops — it worked very well, so well in fact that next I opened my own warehouse — and before I could blink I was flying to Hong Kong and Portugal buying mens shirts and selling them into stores and to people who visited my warehouse. I now went out and bought my first sports car, a bright red Ferrari. Now people WERE looking at me when out and about! I must admit, living became a bit wild then and I just about ran the business into the ground taking with me just enough to start up the next business.
They say that money makes money … how true. I next started buying derelict type houses; I got together a gang of builder lads who would renovate them for me then I would re-sell for a profit. I would own about 10 houses at any one time so as I could keep my gang working no matter what type of weather we had to put up with.
Now I’m On The Crest Of A Wave
In the meanwhile I started up another company specializing in video films; buying them from the organizations that had made the original films … Warner Brothers … MGM … Walt Disney … CIC … and many others … and putting them on display stands in lots of small shops throughout the county where I lived. Soon I was making so much money I would find myself at the end of one working day meeting my friends in the pub straight from work and I would have £100,000.00 in my brief case … one days takings. I took myself more and more into the video business, bought 2 large walk-in van and employed 2 driver to look after the shops whilst I went off and opened 32 large video rental shops and the biggest warehouse for the sale, or rental of video films in the Northwest of England. But to do that I had to sell off all the houses I owned and put the proceeds into expanding my video company.
I was living the life of Riley; bought a top of the range Porsche, a 928 GTI and a beautiful house for myself … gave my girlfriend a Lotus Esprit Turbo to drive round in. I had come a long way since my business beginnings when I had purchased £20 of stockings to sell to my friends.
This was now the early 1980’s when the bank base rate reached a crushing 17%. Businesses were closing down everywhere. Then catastrophe struck! Rupert Murdoch launched Sky Movies onto the television broadcasting scene which meant that people didn’t need to leave their homes to go out to a video store and hire a video to watch a movie, they could do it all from home and book it via the telephone.
Absolutely Penniless Again
During the 1980’s when in my 40’s life took an almighty change of circumstances. With Rupert Murdoch changing the way the video business traded; my business folded overnight making me penniless … I mean absolutely stony broke because I had put everything I owned into the business, to save it. Selling the offices we had occupied, which I owned, and various other properties; I had also raised the mortgage on my house, to the maximum and paid that into the company bank account … but all to no avail.
I sat at home, staring at a wall contemplating suicide, having lost more than a million pounds … then to make matters worse, I had to go and meet the Official Receiver who made me personally bankrupt, took my house off me, although they allowed me to stay there while they decided what to do with it; I couldn’t sink much lower … so I thought; but I did because the police visited me at home to ask all sorts of questions about my expired business.
To run my business, I had employed a chartered accountant – who incidentally used to turn up for work in his Rolls – Also my solicitor was the managing director of my company. In fact, although I was the beneficial owner of the business, being the entire share holder, they had had a lot of control. What I didn’t know was that the accountant had been raising money on our assets, selling the same property several times over — fraud! Eventually we were all taken to court.
Straight to Jail — Literally!
I didn’t feel threatened during the 9-week trial — I mean I had been the guy who had put everything he owned into the company’s bank, to save it and taken nothing out. I had even increased the mortgage on my house by £70,000 and put that into the bank —I thought the judge would see that and it would save me being sent down, but it had all been to no avail. You can imagine the shock, when the judge found the accountant and the solicitor guilty of fraudulent trading and then he turned to me and said, that as the beneficial owner, I had to have known all that was happening, and so he sentenced me to 12 months prison — Arrrgggghhhh!
To make matters worse when I went into the big house my best pal died. He was a great guy and I loved him dearly; the worst bit was the prison authority wouldn’t allowed me to go to his funeral.
1999 must have been the worst year and best of my life. My mother dies — my sister died — I lost over one million pounds — The Official Receiver made me bankrupt — I had my house taken off me, I was locked up in prison and i was allowed out 2 days before Christmas. Come back out of that mess!
I have to write here that I owe a lot to my wife whose staunch support and trust in me gave me strength and the foresight to see that one lost challenge was not the end of my life. If I had made and lost one business, then I could make others … I mean I knew the route because I had been down that road once before. I still had a good reason to get out of bed in the morning. If I succeeded once in business, then I could do it again.
The Millennium – A New Beginning – From Scratch
I got out of prison the day before Christmas; the millennium happened and I was totally destitute. I had to ask my wife (I got married before going into prison) for the money to buy a glass of beer at the local pub. It was whilst there one night that I got into a conversation with a guy standing at the bar next to me; he told me about an idea whereby I could start and run a national; shop maintenance business that could be started from home; all I needed was enthusiasm, a telephone, a computer, the internet and the will to succeed. I created a company called The National Maintenance Team. The idea was I would telephone the biggest businesses in the UK — businesses that owned 300 – 700 stores throughout the UK. It was hard work to get to the ear of the person in charge of each company’s maintenance department, with perseverance I managed, telling them that my company would look after the maintenance or their stores throughout the entire UK and that we could cover any emergency no matter what, no matter where.
When the maintenance jobs started coming in, I simply used the Internet to find the tradesmen I needed where ever I needed them and signed them up on mini contracts whereby theywould allow me
20% off the price of each repair job. I soon moved into nice offices and in one year managed to put £100,000 cash into my pocket and started a financial company, helping people who were in debt – Debt Management!
I left my wife to run that with a staff of 8 and started selling satellite systems into pubs, earning me on a good week £5,000. The idea was that using a satellite system and beaming the football in from other countries the landlords could show the football to their clients without having to pay£500 per week for a license. Life was good again — I bought my wife a red Mercedes Sports and myself a BMW 640 Sports.
YIPPPPPEEEEEEE!
I got 10 years out of the financial business but had to close down, because of new governmental rules and regulations. Despite the fact that we had been trading in this line of business for the past 10 years and that we and had never had a complaint; the government decreed that we didn’t have enough experience and declined our next annual trading license. The satellite system business eventually collapsed because of European legislation making it totally illegal to show premiership football other than using Skye Television who held the national license. Skye had hit me for a second time!
Life has been bleak since then with my wife Linda getting throat cancer and we’ve had to live off my savings for the past 3 years which are now just about gone. But I’ve been looking at the Internet which I firmly believe is the business of the future. I know for a fact there are guys and gals out there in this great big world earning £5,000 – even £20,000 per week. Believe me I am not exaggerating and so it is my intention to have myself a piece of this beautiful pie. Are you interested? tommy@tommystuart.com