Media Spotlight: Wake Up And Change Your Life

7 March 2011 | By Robert Thickett

Duncan Bannatyne has become a household name in the UK thanks to his role on the BBC television show Dragon’s Den where he pours scorn on one half-baked business idea after another.

So it’s a bit of a shock to find him so positive at the start of his book Wake Up and Change Your Life, claiming that anyone can become a millionaire.

Bannatyne tells us he left school at 15 without any qualifications and by the age of 19 he’d been dishonourably discharged from the Royal Navy.

He went through a series of dead-end jobs and by 30 he describes himself as a penniless beach bum.

But after reading about self-made businessman Alan Sugar he set about building his own empire, first running an ice cream van business, then moving into care homes. At age 37 he was a millionaire.

Bannatyne states early on that Wake Up And Change Your Life is ’no get rich quick’ book, and you can see his point. It starts with helping you assess whether you’ve got the right sort of mindset for running your own business and why your regular salary might not be so secure. With unemployment rocketing and all businesses feeling the pinch, this is a salient message.

He then gives a rundown of how to set up your firm, put together a business pitch and structure funding derived from investors, and a useful breakdown of different terms.

The day-to-day nitty gritty of running a business is also dealt with, from VAT and taxes to insurance and pensions. His advice about fixing legal costs is interesting - during one negotiation he recalls that while one side had a whopping £1m bill in legal costs, he’d fixed a flat fee of just £25,000.

Fixing costs seems to be Bannatyne’s thing, whether it’s dealing with architects or fixing his mortgage. As he rationalises it, fixing his mortgage has given him security and allowed him to forecast his future accurately, although just think how much he could have saved with a tracker.

The last chapter is the money shot where he finally describes how to cash out and get rich if things go well. Or to pick yourself up off the floor and put it down as a lesson learnt if your plans for global domination don’t go to plan.

But the question you can’t help asking is whether Bannatyne really is the ordinary man that he makes out to be? Like any good self-help book his message is that anyone can do it, which incidentally is the title of his first book. Clearly he’s found another lucrative industry to profit from with this, his fourth book.

What he espouses is the sort of meritocratic message the Political establishment loves. The reality is that Bannatyne has an incredible business mind and once he realised what he wanted to do, he did it.

So is he an everyman that we can all emulate or an elite talented individual?

The publishers anticipated this argument so in each chapter there is a case study about someone with a similar background to Bannatyne. These individuals have made a go of it, many failing on numerous occasions, but eventually they’ve made it work.

What Bannatyne is dealing with is the fear of failure and showing through practical advice and case studies that it is possible to set up on your own. With such a positive message it’s hard not to be inspired.

Review by Robert Thickett

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