From construction to lingerie, with 24 year-old multimillionaire Gary Martin

The Northern Irish entrepreneur reveals his formula for success at the business “game”, it’s all in the mind

Gary Martin lived the dream for many a man when he got to run his own nightclub.

Not impressive in itself, except for the fact that he did this at the age of 15, when he should not have been allowed onto his own premises (capacity: 2,000) after 9 pm.

“I was really more excited about the girls who would come – but I couldn’t tell anyone that,” he jokes.

He was well versed in business by that age, with a father who worked in construction and a mother as a hairdresser.

He grew up with business being a regular topic at the table. “Instead of being sick about it, I grew a great pride about it and really wanted to be involved!” he says.

Yet the teenage Martin, growing up in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, moved on from nightclubs into the gambling business as he started renting out fruit machines. Seeing how much money they earned at his club, he bought two fruit machines for £500 and managed to sweet-talk two local chip owners into hosting them.

Martin’s breakthrough was when he got into the property business, admitting “I didn’t understand how people had been making money so quickly, and knew it was a get rich quick scheme”.

After taking out a box-out advert in the local paper (listing his mobile number under the title “Gary buys houses”), Martin was overwhelmed by the responses. “People kept calling, so I had it diverted to home!” he says.

The property entrepreneur was forging his career under the nose of his own mother. He was nearly rumbled a few weeks later when one potential client rang up while he was at school.

“My mother ended up answering and said ‘No, Gary is at school’, but the guy replied – what time does he finish teaching? Thankfully she didn’t tell him the truth…!”

The client ended up coming through, as Martin snapped up his property for £45,000. He invested more than £7000 of his own savings to make his first property purchase.  It proved to be a wise choice as Martin was able to sell it off within three weeks for £86,000.  

“You see this profit at that age and you can’t really fathom what it is”

“I remember sitting in the Sainsbury’s carpark with my friend – and the estate agent said ‘We have an offer for 85!” and I said “see if they can do 86!’ I thought I was a smart businessman”  he says.

Martin’s keen eye for buying low and selling high led to him earning his first million at the age of 17. His approach was, he thought, “naïve” but proved effective as he would never buy anything “unless it was 25% undervalued on the day or I believed I could add 25% more to it, so in the event the market rose, we still had value there”.

By the age of 18, Martin had built up a company to the value of $20m, selling it to an American firm.  He tried going to university but only attended for two weeks.

A year later, he set up an estate agency with his brother and ended up developing over 150 properties, yet it was the onset of the credit crunch that really tested Martin’s business mettle.

“I made a list of all the good things that came out of the credit crunch in 07/08, summing up that ok we started a really good business and we had cash… we have a great network. But the rules have changed, and everyone knew this,” he says.

And so Martin decided to diversify. After losing £100,000 in an attempted food business, he “sharpened up” as he invested in the construction industry, and also the beauty industry (“selling hair products”).

Martin expanded his operations across to the UK and London a few years ago, setting up offices near Oxford Street. He has been busy with his construction firm, working on projects “for a million pounds up” in Harley Street and developing Tesco Express stores.

Martin may come across as a seeming all-singing all-dancing entrepreneur, and he is aware of that. He casually reveals to me that he is just about to launch a new hairproduct site called “Unique Looks” and he has been expanding further – “into lingerie, and children’s clothing”.

Why has he decided to spread himself so widely, I ask? “To see if I can do it”. The reason Martin does business is, of his own admission, “it’s fun. It’s like a game, it’s like Monopoly”.

The striking thing about Martin is his unstoppable confidence. That attitude, he tells me, has been his secret to business success.

“You know after you go to the gym and you’re feeling pumped? I always want to operate feeling like that. You should be celebrating small successes and setting yourself achievable aims to make yourself feel unstoppable”

“In my approach to business, I will not take no for an answer. I will sit outside your house to get a deal.”

“When things are good, that stuff doesn’t really count, but it’s when you’re in tough times, you can really test out if that is working”

“If all this psychology really works, I should be able to use this to change what is happening in my business at the moment. You can’t change the market, but I can change what is going on inside my head and what I’m focusing on”

Now at the age of 24, he has been invited by the Executives Association of Great Britain to address its eminent members at a lunch in the Dorchester Hotel (as you do).

His advice to entrepreneurs is simple – “It’s all about psychology. There is a formula for business, 90% of it is mind-set and only 10% is the technical stuff”.

 

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