Your Hired! - Alan Sugar November 14

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Mini-CV:

- Born to working class parents in the East End
- Began his career as a civil service statistician
- Started up on his own selling everything from vegetables to computer aerials
- Launched Amstrad aged 21

Sir Alan Sugar, the multimillionaire and star of TV show The Apprentice, is perhaps the classic example of how an entrepreneurial spirit combined with a lot of hard work can bring you success.

Alan Sugar - Amstrad and the ApprenticeHis humble origins are in London’s East End, where he was born in Hackney in 1947 as the son of a tailor. Now he is believed to be worth around �800 million, making him one of the richest businessmen in the country, so how did he get there?

Having left school at 16, Alan Michael Sugar’s entrepreneurial career temporarily stalled when he took a job as a statistician in the civil service. He then decided to strike out on his own, and started selling anything he could get his hands on - starting with vegetables - out of the back of his van. He then went on to sell car aerials, launching his own company Alan Michael Sugar Trading (Amstrad) at the age of 21.

Then, seeing the potential for profit, he went into the manufacturing business, starting off with turntable covers in the 1970s. What he realised early on in his business career was that being able to make something with a high retail value from cheap component parts was bound to make a lot of money. This basic entrepreneurial concept ended up making Sir Alan millions when, in 1986, he launched the Amstrad word processor.

The machine was popular across Europe because it was affordable, but it still cost much less to put together than it cost to buy. His company, by this time floating on the London Stock Exchange, saw is value double annually throughout the 1980s.

In 1990, Sir Alan bought Tottenham Hotspur football club, which he is believed to have made a great deal of money out of. However, he himself has referred to the whole episode as “a waste of my life”, having sold his remaining shares in the club in 2001. He was knighted in 1999 for services to industry.

Although Sir Alan’s technology business ideas are far from drying up (he is currently manufacturing digital set-top boxes and marketing other devices), he has most recently been in the public eye for his appearances on The Apprentice, dishing out entrepreneurial business advice, and the occasional harsh word, to the contestants.

So what can Sir Alan teach these business leaders of the future? The first thing is surely that hard work is a prerequisite for success, the second is that business opportunities lie everywhere - even in selling vegetables. Thirdly, and perhaps most relevant for our time, is that the rapid evolution of technology - particularly computer technology - offers innumerable, and as yet unthought-of, possibilities for success. You’re hired!

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