Alfie Best, multi-millionaire founder of the UK’s biggest mobile homes operator Wyldecrest Parks, was born in a caravan in Leicester.
In an interview for EG’s Tomorrow’s Leaders podcast, Best, the son of a Romany gypsy couple, says that despite his enormous success – extensively chronicled on TV and in the tabloids – he still feels like the person he was growing up.
Best says: “I don’t feel like I’m talking about me. I feel like I’m talking about somebody else. It’s as if I’m looking through a window and looking at what somebody else has done.”
Best recounts his professional journey from the moment he started his first business at 16, hiring out vans in Forest Gate, East London. He made it a “phenomenal success” before demand withered away and his business crashed in the recession of the early 1990s.
He says: “It collapsed in terrific style. It’s as if someone put a fence around the business and put a sign on there saying, ‘Toxic: Do not enter.’”
But the reason the business failed, Best says, is because he did not adapt it to cater for the recession – something he was determined to change. He quickly moved into his car, renting out his house to make ends meet. He spent days driving around to see what types of shops had queues out front. Those would be his next target.
Ray Tang/REX/Shutterstock
Seeing how busy mobile phone shops were, he talked his way into a job at one, where he was paid £70 a week to sweep the floor and make tea.
But making tea was just a way for him to work out what the company did and how he could replicate it. He says: “I wasn’t getting £70 a week. I was getting £700 a week because I was learning their business.”
Within just a few months of menial tasks and extreme frugality, Best was able to open up his own shop, paying nothing but business rates. “We were in the middle of the recession,” he says. “They were pleased to let somebody move into a shop as long as you paid the rates.”
His shops were a success and he expanded to 13 locations. On the side, Best set up a separate company to buy the freeholds on the sites, amassing a commercial property portfolio and kickstarting his career in the industry.
Natasha Quarmby/REX/Shutterstock
Finding his roots
Best is most animated when he talks about his identity – a part of him he used to hide, but which he says defines much of who he is.
Thinking back to his early years, he says: “You’ll be talking to your friends and they’ll be talking about gypsies – not knowing you’re a gypsy – telling them how bad they are. They’re liars and thieves and cheats.
“That can have a profound effect on your character, and your mindset.”
When his first business succeeded, Best says that for the first time in his life he felt important and that people were no longer looking down on him. These days he wants others who share his background to feel the same way.
He has appeared on several TV programmes, including Channel 4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Fortune, where he and his son – also named Alfie – gave a glimpse of their lives to counter what he calls “cartoonish” onscreen depictions of gypsies.
Best says: “It allowed a lot more gypsies to come out, to actually kick the closet door down and say, ‘You know what, I am a gypsy, I am quite proud of it. I don’t have to hide my identity anymore.’”
Listen to the latest Tomorrow’s Leaders podcast for much more from Best.
Alfie Best on…
His spirit animal
“I see myself as a panther because I’m prepared to wait. I tend to work on my own. I’ll wait until the opportunity is right for me to strike.”
Thinking positively
“The British nature is ‘Let’s talk about the bad weather. It’s raining outside.’ But for ducks, it’s great!”
Appreciating hard work
“If you think of a business like a pyramid, you see the beauty of the triangle that’s coming out of the ground. But you don’t actually see – until you really get into it – all the tombs and the intricate chambers and the jewels buried deep below.”
His motivation
“The fear of losing it all tomorrow. The fear of going bust. The fear of going backwards. That’s what constantly drives me forward.”
Work/life balance
“I don’t think I have found that balance. Whatever I do, I do 120%. It’s very difficult to be so committed and get the balance right.”
What’s on an Alfie Best mixtape?
■ Anything by Rodriguez
■ Tina Turner – Simply the Best
■ Nelly Furtado – I’m Like a Bird
■ Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl
To send feedback, e-mail karl.tomusk@egi.co.uk or tweet @ktomusk or @estatesgazette
