After graduating from university, he left Ireland for England in search of work. In the mid-1980s, there were few jobs in Dublin due to the recession.
Ms Wilson, who now lives in Chippenham, Wiltshire, got her first job as a telephone debt collector with Citibank. He then moved on to work in a real estate company, which suited him well.
“Not having a degree means you can't get into postgraduate courses and things like that,” he says. “But within probably two years, I made up the difference.”
He became a manager and then began turning around an ailing real estate company, which he continued for six years.
Wilson began building his wealth in his 20s when he and his partner bought their first home.
“The apartments I bought were in very good locations, but they were dirty. We spent a lot of time building them up and then we ended up selling them. , I would sell every six to nine months and that's how I drove the market up.”
By the time Wilson was 33, the couple were living in a large townhouse in Clifton, Bristol, and Wilson could afford to send his children to private school.
He retrained as a financial advisor and eventually worked for mortgage broker John Charcol as a branch manager before being promoted to development director.
“However, I found that working life was really, really tough. I worked very short hours and had a very short attention span, so I quit my job on my 40th birthday.'' , I started my own business.”
He formed an asset management company with his business partner, Lansdowne Place, and the company grew rapidly.
Over the past 20 years, Wilson has also helped start a number of businesses, including superplastic molding and construction.
Money earned from his real estate business helped fund his other ventures. He used his own money to get his business off the ground and borrowed money, he said, rather than accepting outside investment to grow his business.
The more money you borrowed and repaid, the more trust you built with the lender, and the cheaper the money became. However, he advised against borrowing against the value of the home as personal guarantees can be risky. Finding the right business partner is also important, he says.
