Duncan Bannatyne is a British entrepreneur who is famous for participating in the TV-show Dragons’ Den, where regular people pitch their business ideas to millionaire entrepreneurs who then decide whether to invest in these people or not.

In his book „Anyone Can Do It“ Duncan describes how at the age of 30, being a total noone (and also having spent 8 months in prison) he started his own ice cream vending business, then moved into care homes and finally earned most of his 120+ MGBP-s with „Bannatyne Fitness“ sports club chain.

I really enjoyed reading the book. Written in a no-nonsense way it outlines the calculations Bannatyne made when making his business decisions. More often than not those decisions were based on simple rational common sense thinking and not on a fancy thorough analysis or clever strategy. For example, in the fitness club industry Bannatyne figured out that people are seldom willing to drive more than 10 minutes to the sports club. Thus when opening new clubs he always made sure that there would be a lot of potential customers living in the 10-minute-driving-time circle around the club. He noticed that the clubs built on beaches were constantly struggling and he figured it might be because half of the potential customers of those clubs were fish.

The book gives a lot of ideas or ways to think in various areas of business. I give you an example of the area of marketing (straight from the book):

I knew that filling the gym up at 6.30 p.m. on a Monday is a doddle – even bad gyms are full then. The secret to a successful health-club business is not to have an expensive facility lying practically empty during the day. Any gyms offer an off-peak membership to combat this, but they often end up selling cut-price membership to people who would pay the full price if the cheaper option wasn’t available. We decided to actively try to recruit the biggest section of the community that doesn’t work – people are retired – and make the welcome at Bannatyne’s.

As someone who was going through the big 5-0 myself at that point, I didn’t think our target market of active retired people would be flattered with anything labelled ’over fifties’. We also didn’t want to discourage younger users from visiting us during the day, so we came up with our „Young at Heart“ programme. Young at Heart was designed around being sociable and having a healthy lifestyle rather than attaining a certain level of fitness. So if you’re a YAH menber, you get a free cup of tea or coffee after every class, and we also give you day passes so you can bring friends in to try us out. Young at Heart has been an outstanding success for Bannatyn’e – if you come in after a class at lunchtime you can’t get a seat in our lounges.

Usually, in the books like this, the author does not reveal much about his private life. But in „Anyone Can Do It“ Bannatyne describes his emotions and also his private life and how it influenced his business. This makes for a really interesting and insightful reading. And, as the author says: if a guy with a criminal record and no business contacts could earn 100 M£, then anyone can. All you need is a Yellow Pages and some determination.