Diary of a High Net Worth Investor

Something a bit different for you today. We’re looking at the almost taboo subjects of addiction, mental health and even eating disorder challenges facing high net worth individuals, business founders and senior executives. And my guest, Janine McNab, is extremely well qualified to talk about these issues. She has worked across a diverse range of global high-growth sectors including travel, utilities, technology, and innovation before finding her home in healthcare some 6 years ago. She’s the Chief Operating Officer of Harbor London and Orchestrate healthcare where they tackle these issues with a multidisciplinary, medically led team of experts including Psychiatrists, therapists, nutritionists, addiction specialists, chefs, personal trainers, and wellness coaches. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

Jeremy Middleton is an inspiration to any UK entrepreneur looking to build a unicorn business. After meeting business partner Richard Harpin when they both worked at corporate giant Proctor & Gamble, they took the brave step of leaving the regular pay cheque behind and setting up their own businesses. There were plenty of challenges and false starts but they eventually founded a plumbing and heating company that morphed into HomeServe, now an international company and the UK’s largest home repair business. In 2023 the company was taken private by Brookfield Asset Management at a value of £4.1 billion. In parallel my guest began his own consulting firm and has made investments in multiple SMEs where he offers patient capital as well as sound advice to the founders.  He’s also been active in philanthropy through his own foundation and community enterprise fund as well as being a Conservative party candidate in several elections. In 2012 he was awarded the CBE for services to charity and politics. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

You need to hear what AI expert Ziggy Kormandel says about the future in an AI world. A few spoilers: “What took $1 million and three years we can now do in 2 months”.“School is obsolete. The model is flawed, the gig is up!”.“Privacy is dead. Live like there’s always a camera on you.”“Our grandchildren will marry AI robots!”Ziggy is president of Stayhealthy and its acquisition Augmently. Stayhealthy combines healthy lifestyle solutions using enhanced engagement technology with a global community wellness network, while Augmently creates hyper realism on mobile devices. He’s involved with at least five other companies and is now heavily into the theory and practice of Artificial Intelligence. All this and he now lives just down the road from me in Portugal.  Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is Tim Croak, a Toledo, Ohio based founder of a wealth management company with a 40 year track record in investment and retirement planning. He’s a Chartered Life Underwriter and a Chartered Financial Consultant who became the youngest life member in the country of the prestigious Million Dollar Round Table and is the author of the book “The Light, a guide to living life with awareness, honor, and purpose”.He's served on various advisory councils for Columbus Life, New England Financial, Ameritas Investment Corp and Aviva USA. With his son Eric he looks after $500 million on behalf of his clients and is increasingly focused on the challenges facing high net worth families in the 2020s. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

For a long time now I’ve been telling my high net worth clients that, as their wealth increases, they need to upgrade their advisory team. Too many families remain loyal to accountants and tax consultants who do not deal with clients of a similar profile. My guest today only deals with American clients earning $2 million plus a year, providing a mix of tax advice and wealth management designed to help them hang onto as much of their hard earned dollars as possible. His practice embraces how to structure your business and investment affairs to best effect, dealing with an exit from your business and planning the transfer of wealth to the next generation. He’s a Forbes Council member and author of the best selling book Win The War For Money And Success. His name is Neil Jesani. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is Mark Flickinger, General Partner and Chief Operating Officer at BIP Capital and BIP Ventures, a major VC firm based in Atlanta Georgia, where he’s very much focused on fundraising and investor success. Before focusing on the provision of venture capital, he’s worked at the coal face with startup consulting firm 4th Strand and a biotech startup developing therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune diseases. He recently served as the Chairman of the Board for Venture Atlanta and sits on the board of several other companies. He has an MBA from The University of North Carolina and a Mechanical Engineering degree from Princeton. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is James Church, author of the Amazon best-selling book, Investable Entrepreneur: How to convince investors your business is the one to back, and co-founder and COO of Robot Mascot, a global award-winning investment readiness agency.He’s on a mission to stop great ideas failing due to poor communication and is frustrated to see so many founders struggle to raise the capital they need because they’re unable to convince investors their business is the one to back. He’s won the Business Advisor of the Year award at the Growing Business Awards and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Forbes. He’s run mentoring sessions at national and international incubators and delivered lectures for The Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Design Museum and Regents University London. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

In this episode we’ll hear from two business partners, one from the Spanish island of Majorca and the other from that financial hot spot in the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man. They have very different backgrounds but a shared love of all things financial. Unusually for two guys steeped in the traditional, regulated financial world, they were early adopters of crypto currencies like Bitcoin and eventually decided to launch the world’s first digital asset fund of funds under their Block Asset Management company. Their names are  Kevin Ballard and Manuel Du Luque. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

David Fleck is at the forefront of the technology that will shape our future in the areas of health, life sciences and clean energy. Through close ties with the California Institute Of Technology his venture capital firm, Freeflow, invests in everything from drug discovery to space technology and provides all kinds of ongoing support to its portfolio companies. His career has included consultancy with PWC and Bain, product management at Google and building and selling audience engagement platform Disqus. Outside of business he is heavily involved with Family Promise, a charity helping homeless children across America.  His firm has a unique way of working with founders. often spending the best part of a year getting to know them before making a decision to invest. Then, he's happy to wait for 7-10 years for an exit. All of which surely qualifies him as the most patient VC in Silicon Valley! Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

It's very rare to find an entrepreneur who is shaking up a major asset class through new technology and new thinking. In today's episode we meet just such a man in Canadian Antony Abell, CEO of TPX Property Exchanges. He's lived in the UK for many years, including a spell in the army and as an Olympic skiing coach before turning to the business world. He's been involved with 24 companies in 28 years and his latest venture is the most disruptive yet - turning property into liquid funds through TPX Property Exchanges. The London exchange is the first to launch, with 20 other target sites around the world planned for the next 18 months. The social and economic impact of this platform will be huge, enabling young families to buy half price homes and the asset rich and cash poor to achieve instant liquidity without the compound interest of equity release or lifetime mortgages.     Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

We kick off season 2 of Diary of a High Net Worth Investor with one of the most interesting people I know in the investment world. Swen Lorenz, like Warren Buffet, started buying stocks and shares as a teenager and never stopped. His gift is unearthing unusual opportunities and special situations anywhere on the planet, even including a way of playing Donald Trump's interest in Greenland! Swen shares his findings through UndervaluedShares.com and by hosting dinners with thought leaders on every continent. He presents the best ideas at the annual  Weird Shit Investing summit and has recently launched a new community for 'Poor Millionaires', those with a net worth of £2 - 20 million who he and I agree are poorly served by the financial services industry.             Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today spent over 30 years as a fund manager with organisations like Investec and Hambro and has always managed to combine that role with writing about investing for a wider audience. He has written for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and the Times, but is perhaps best known for his frequent articles in Money Week, Britain’s best selling financial magazine. He keeps his hand in as a non executive director at the Ecofin Global Infrastructure and Utilities Trust and the Gore St Energy Storage Fund. I can also confidently claim that he is the first guest to appear on this podcast who is a member of the Court of the Worshipful Company of Barbers. His name is Max King. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is a former Vice President of ABN Amro who has carved out a niche as one of the UK’s leading experts on investing in gold. Money Week magazine asked him to produce their Metals & Miners newsletter while he then worked with the legendary US investor Jim Rickards to set up the Gold Speculator service. He’s a regular speaker at industry events and is often interviewed in the press and on TV whenever gold becomes flavour of the month as it very much seems to be at the moment. He also helps commodity companies such as gold miners to raise capital so he gets the inside track on some exciting companies before they become well known to the public. He wrote the book on How To Invest In Gold and he offers a package called the Gold Programme to get people started with the yellow metal. His name is Simon Popple.Learn more at https://www.goldprogram.co.uk/ Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today may be the person for whom the word polymath was invented. He’s an author, a comedian, a TV presenter, a voiceover artist and an expert on precious metals and crypto currencies where his articles can be read in almost every issue of Money Week magazine. He also publishes the Flying Frisby on substack, an investment bulletin read by over 5,000 people in 107 countries. He even made the hit parade with his pro Brexit song 17 million F-Offs. His name is Dominic Frisby Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today mirrored my own career path in providing billing systems for telecoms companies before joining the board of a silicon valley CRM software company for six years. His exit from that company has enabled him to pursue his passion, which is promoting the philosophy and ideas of one of my favourite authors, Ayn Rand. In 2012 he co-founded the Ayn Rand Centre in Israel and in 2018 became President and CEO of the main Ayn Rand Institute in America. He found a video of mine on Youtube where I reviewed Ayn’s masterpiece Atlas Shrugged and that led to a beautiful gift of a framed facsimile of Ayn’s hand written transcript of the first and last pages of Atlas Shrugged arriving at the Beaufort office in Richmond. When I got in touch to thank him I realised that he has a fascinating story to share which is why he joins us today. His name is Tal Tsfany.If you want to donate to the work of the Ayn Rand Institute in providing copies of Atlas Shrugged to teenagers you can do so at https://ari.aynrand.org/donate/ Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is a former officer in the Grenadier Guards who then went into the city and started a 25 year career in fund management. From 1998 to 2015 he was Head of Absolute Return at HSBC Global Asset Management with $3bn under management. He was then Chief Investment Officer at Newscape until 2018 before heading up the Multi Asset team at Atlantic House Fund Management where his fund ranked 1st out of 47 in its sector. In 2020 he left to found Bytetree, a research and asset management company where he has become best know for his Whisky and Soda portfolios and for a unique index that combines Bitcoin and Gold to great effect. His name is Charlie Morris. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

I find it easy to empathise with my guest today because he had a long and successful corporate career with multinationals before redundancy forced him to turn his hobby into a business. For me it was a career in IT followed by a move into alternative investments. For him, board level roles with major distillers and packaging companies followed by a move into full time property investment. He now owns over 100 properties valued in the multi-millions and shares a lifetime of property experience through Touchstone Education, run with the help of his wife Aniko and specializing in the more niche areas of bricks and mortar such as commercial property and serviced accommodation. He now lives in Monaco from where he joins me today. I have to say I’m worried about getting a word in edgeways because he also holds the Guinness World Record for continuous talking! His name is Paul Smith. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is an inspiring example of how to overcome adversity in your private life and limited opportunities in your business life. She has used her own story as the basis for helping women around the world to gain a mix of confidence and financial freedom by overcoming self limiting beliefs. She’s the author of fifteen books and the founder of Global Woman Club with clubs in more than 20 countries around the world and a goal of reaching  10 million female entrepreneurs by 2025. Her name is Mirela Sula Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

There are serial entrepreneurs and there are serious serial entrepreneurs. My guest today is in the latter category, at one point having set up at least one new business every year for thirty years. Trained as an engineer, that disciplined approach has stayed with him in all his business ventures which include Cosworth Engineering, Quantel, Classic FM and what is now one of California’s leading wineries. In 1989 he was knighted for his contribution to British  industry and we’re proud to have him as a member of Beaufort Society. His name is Sir Peter Michael. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today has spent more than thirty years helping property investors to structure their portfolio in the most tax efficient way for themselves and, equally important, for their children. It won’t have escaped your attention that taxes are rising all over the world as governments realise they’ve made spending commitments they can no longer afford. High net worth families have been one of the prime targets in the UK for more than ten years now, with a succession of tax breaks being removed and new taxes applied. With 18,000 pages of tax law and almost 1,000 tax reliefs available, it’s clear that we all need some expert help. My guest has taken a brand-new approach to tax planning, learning what you want to achieve and then using his team of experts to create a bespoke model from a large toolkit of options that are all fully HMRC approved.  Depending on your circumstances, the change can be transformational for your wealth. His firm is called Rethink Tax and my guest is its founder Martin Beadle. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today describes himself as an ordinary bloke from Norwich who does a lot of stuff, makes a lot of mistakes but has done OK overall. He’s an ex RAF pilot who quit flying after 8 years to become a full time trader on the financial markets. It took six years to really learn his craft so by necessity he became a business owner so he could use the profits to support his trading. This has morphed into a highly successful training company called the Realistic Trader, which now also includes crypto trading. He’s an international speaker and the author of the highly acclaimed Crypto Book - How To Invest Safely in Bitcoin and Other Crypto Currencies. Keen to capture his skills as a legacy for his two sons, in 2018 he wrote 400,000 words which were then made into short video lessons as part of the Wealth Acton Plan, a sort of Netflix for business and money. His name is Siam Kidd. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today doesn’t do anything by halves. With his wife Leanne he made his first foray into property investing after a Robert Kiyosaki event and went on to become the biggest private landlord in Scotland. From there it was a short step into property development and construction, before he expanded into mergers and acquisitions, where the Carling Group has been involved in a billion pounds worth of deals in the UK and Europe with a focus on distinct but fragmented sectors such as technology, Energy, construction and Healthcare. He also runs GCC Equity Partners with offices in Dubai, the UK, the United States and mainland Europe where businesses with ambitious leaders can fast track their growth by leveraging the company’s network, expertise, and knowledge of other international markets. And, in his spare time, he runs United Capital which is busily consolidating the fragmented UK de-carbonisation sector with a view to winning lucrative government projects in green and renewables projects. His name is Graeme Carling. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today is someone I’ve known for something like fifteen years and who has always impressed me on at least two levels – for his erudite wordsmithing that turns the dry subject of investing into works of literature and for his astute observations on everything from macroeconomics to the more dystopian side of where our society seems to be heading. What makes him especially worth listening to is that he’s not simply an observer watching from the sidelines, he’s a money manager who has to back up his insights with investment decisions. He was Chief Investment Officer at Henry Ansbacher, Union Bancaire Privée and PFP Group before setting up his own Price Value Partners fund in 2015. The clue is in the name, my guest today is Tim Price. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today started his career with accountancy giant Ernst & Young where he worked with some of the largest global companies, including Royal Dutch Shell and Coca-Cola across the UK, US Middle East & Africa . He then did an MBA at Cranfield before setting up his own accounting firm so he could work with and learn from SME businesses. He engaged 120 clients in 6 months and gained a great understanding of the challenges entrepreneurs face. That led to a focus on coaching and mentoring, where he’s worked with more than 400 entrepreneurs over the last 25 years with some transformational outcomes including stock market flotations and deals measured in the hundreds of millions. His name is Ravi Dua. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.

My guest today has got to be the best known stock market pundit in the UK. His red bow tie and braces have been synonymous with sage advice about the financial world for at least three decades, most recently on GB News and Talk TV. What you may not know about him is that he was a key player in the Big Bang in the City of London in the 1980s including the establishment of the secondary AIM market, and was one of the founders of Seven Investment Management which now has over £19 billion under management and more than 400 staff. At a time when any sane person would be retiring to the golf course, he’s at it again seeking to revive the concept of local stock markets that invest in local businesses as Chairman of an organization called Regionally. His name, of course, is Justin Urquhart Stewart. Want to learn more about using business and investing to build the lifestyle and legacy you deserve? Subscribe to my free Escape Velocity newsletter on Substack here.