Duncan Bannatyne is a well known entrepreneur in the UK, known famously for his role in the television series Dragon’s Den (BBC). In his early life he was poverty stricken like a lot of families that grew up in the 1950’s in Scotland. Aged 15yrs he wanted a bicycle but was denied one due to lack of money within the family funds. To remedy the lack of having a bicycle, he decided to find some sort of work, asking one of the newsagents for a job, they told him “You can have you can get a list of one hundred interested people”, to cut a long story short, he knocked on hundreds of doors until he made the list, and got a job. Aged 20yrs, after years of loyal service in the Navy, Duncan was dishonorably discharged for attempting to throw an officer off a jetty, due in part to the officers abusive behavior.

Duncan spent his twenties going from one pointless job to the next, in search of something more, he craved his own business and wanted to succeed without being told what to do by others. He moved to Jersey where he met his wife. Through countless failures due to the Jersey community not welcoming business from outsiders, Duncan and his wife Joanne left the island. With only enough money to get by with, Duncan risked it all and bought an ice cream van for £450 ($714), within 2yrs he had managed to build such a successful business from it that he had bought several other vans, with employees to work them for him. He eventually left the ice cream business £28,000 ($44,430) better off which prompted him to invest the money into a nursing home, the nursing home was expanded upon and he eventually sold it for a cool £26 million ($41.2 million) and a childrens nursing chain he’d bought along the way for a further £22 million ($34 million). Since then Duncan has gone on to make £320 million ($507.77 million) through building an empire of luxury spa’s and health centers.