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, utili...

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...

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 “School is obsolete.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. Stayh...

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 awaren...

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...

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 a...

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 n...

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 eventua...

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...

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 2...

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!  S...

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 exe...

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...

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 th...

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 P...

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...

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 o...

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 co...

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 wi...

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...

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 morph...

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 wort...

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 grea...

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 t...

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,...