The Men Who Made Millions From Facebook

As well as being a worldwide phenomenon and the focus of a hit film, Facebook has made some people very, very rich. We take a look at them.

It's hard to imagine that Facebook was founded just over seven years ago. With more than 500 million users worldwide and around half the population of the UK signed up, the social networking site has transformed the way many of us communicate with one another in its short life thus far.

Naturally, that popularity has meant big money for some of the people involved its success. We take a closer look at some of the famous (and not-so-famous) men that have made millions from Facebook.

Dustin Moskovitz

The third employee of Facebook, co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has now achieved the status of the world's youngest billionaire - beating his old Harvard room-mate Mark Zuckerberg to the title by just eight days.

Going on to become the firm's first chief technology officer and then vice president of engineering, Moskovitz left in 2008 to start Asana, a software company that aims to "reimagine the way people manage information".

Mark Zuckerberg

CEO and founder of the company, 26-year-old Harvard graduate Mark Zuckerberg is now a household name around the world, with a net worth of $13.5 billion (£8.4bn).

Zuckerberg's fortune was further boosted this year after Facebook's valuation soared to $50 billion (£31.3bn) in the last year, thanks in part to a large investment from Goldman Sachs.

President Obama recently hailed the site in his State of the Union address as an example of great American innovation.

Eduardo Saverin

Played by Andrew Garfield in the film, Eduardo Saverin was Zuckerberg's best friend at Harvard and co-founder of Facebook, before the relationship started to sour.

The now-famous dispute ended with an out of court settlement that saw Saverin's status as co-founder affirmed and left him with a reported 5% stake in the company. Forbes estimates Saverin's wealth at $1.6 billion (£1bn).

After avoiding the spotlight for some time - so much so that we couldn't even get a picture of him - Saverin hit the news early this year as it was announced he was lead investor in an $8 million (£5m) round of investing for Silicon Valley start-up Qwiki.

Sean Parker

Thirty-one-year-old Sean Parker already had history in the dot-com revolution, co-founding Napster, among other start-ups, before he began advising the creators of Facebook.

Played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network, Parker then became the company's first president and is now worth an estimated $1.6 billion (£1bn) according to Forbes.

Peter Thiel 

A man without quite the same rock and roll reputation as Parker is 43-year-old Paypal founder Peter Thiel. A former chess champion, he was rated a master by the US Chess Federation.

Even more impressive is his business acumen, which inspired him to invest $500,000 (£313,000) in Facebook back in 2004.

The rapid success of the site since then will have contributed some way to his $1.5 billion (£938m) fortune, as estimated by Forbes.

Yuri Milner

Another keen chess player, 49-year-old Russian investor Yuri Milner is probably the oldest of those to have made a fortune from Facebook.

Milner, now worth $1 billion (£625m) according to Forbes, made much of his money from his stakes in internet phenomena such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon.

According to Forbes, his company's $200 million (£125m) stake in Facebook has grown an estimated five-fold since it was purchased in 2009.

Mark Pincus

Creator of the hugely popular FarmVille game, Mark Pincus used the success of Facebook to build his own fortune and this year joined the billionaires club for the first time.

His social gaming company Zynga - which was only founded in 2007 - is also behind other Facebook hits such as MafiaWars and CityVille.

The Social Network Cast and Crew

Forgive us, but our list just wouldn't be complete if we didn't mention last year's 'Facebook film', The Social Network.

Grossing almost $100 million (£62m) in the US box office alone last year, the film is set to sell plenty more in DVDs after receiving massive acclaim and heaps of awards since its release.

Add to that the career boost the likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield will have received from the film's success, and we don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest that plenty of people involved in the film have done pretty well for themselves.

Source: MSN Money

Hilary Devey: From the Backstreets of Bolton to the Dragons’ Den

Hilary Devey arriving for The National Lottery Awards 2011, celebrating the UK's best Lottery-funded projects and the difference they make to their communities. Photo: Rebecca Naden/PA Wire

Hilary Devey’s no stranger to overcoming adversity. The tough-talking businesswoman has endured her parents’ bankruptcy, domestic violence at the hands of her husband, her son’s heroin addiction and a stroke that left her partially paralysed.

But has she ever given up? No way. And it’s her tenacity and will to succeed that has seen her not only found a company that’s made her a multi-millionaire but be poached from the BBC to front her own series on Channel 4.

So how did the Bolton-born businesswoman become such a leading name in industry and twice named businesswoman of the year?

It started at seven

When Hilary was seven her parents’ central heating business went bankrupt and the bailiffs came knocking. “Bit by bit they stripped our entire house – mattresses off the bed, crockery from the kitchen and the cooker – as we stood and watched,” Devey explains in her autobiography ‘Bold As Brass’.

The family was forced to live with Devey’s grandmother; Evil Emily, as Devey refers to her. The whole experience sparked a fierce determination in her not to end up the same way.

By 11 she was working for her father, pulling pints after he went into the pub business. She hasn’t stopped working – “grafting” as she would put it – since.

Unlike her two brothers, Hilary didn’t go to university, she left school at 16 and served in the Women’s Royal Air Force for a short time before entering the business world.

By 20 she was in the industry that would make her fortune – Devey went to work as a sales clerk in the offices of a distribution company. She worked her way up in the logistics industry with positions at Tibbett and Britten, Scorpio Logistics and TNT.

“I ended up as national sales manager for TNT but to spend more time with [my son] Mevlit I left to become a freelance marketing consultant for the haulage industry,” Devey explained in the book ‘How I Made My First Million’ by Tammy Cohen.

“One day, I overheard a client saying that it took 12 days to deliver a pallet of freight from Cardiff to Carlisle, because he had to wait for enough orders to fill his lorry.

“That gave me the idea for Pall-Ex, a next-day delivery service for palletised freight. I would group hauliers together according to postcode, get them to deliver goods to a central destination, and then carry other hauliers' loads back. I needed to hire an aircraft hangar in Leicester, and recruit staff to man the phones.”

Belief and determination are more important than banks

But after she decided to take the plunge and set up her own business in 1996, she found securing funding was impossible. Despite having 17 years industry experience behind her and a sound business plan, her bank manager told her: “You’re a woman trying to do business in a man’s world and a single parent. I’m afraid that I’m not going to give you a loan. Or an overdraft.”

As a result Devey was forced to sell her house and downgrade her car to fund her start-up. At times she could barely afford to eat.

“When the bank refused to lend me the £112,000 I needed to set up my business, I sold my house. Things were tough at the start. I was broke and renting a flat above a chip shop. It was so cold, I had to wrap my son in tin foil to keep him warm,” she explained in ‘How I Made My First Million’.

But despite the setbacks, freight company Pall-Ex was indeed set up in an old aircraft hangar. She initially signed up 35 haulier members, enabling the company to cover the length and breadth of the UK.

What started as a one-woman business is now the UK’s biggest freight distribution network with an annual turnover of about £75million. Pall-Ex now distributes up to 9,000 pallets a day from its hub in Leicestershire and is currently expanding into Europe.

“In the last year alone, we’ve launched networks in the Iberian Peninsula, Romania and signified our intentions to begin operating in Turkey,” Devey said last month at the launch of a new European service.

“Two further networks are also due to be up and running in the coming 12 months. In the UK, we’ve developed new bespoke service offerings, welcomed a host of new members and launched our new Northern Hub," she added.

Success at a price

While she worked and worked to set up her business, Devey’s personal life suffered. She has three failed marriages behind her as well experiencing domestic violence at the hands of the father of her only child Mevlit – who himself has fought problems.

“My son has battled heroin addiction for years. I found out in 2004 - he'd been selling my jewellery, TVs and DVDs to get drugs,” Devey said in ‘How I Made My First Million’.

“It’s as if the foundations of your life start to crumble as you look back and try to find the signposts to what started your child on drugs,” she said.

However, her efforts paid off and her son is now clean, working and in a stable relationship of his own. The setbacks weren’t over though. In February 2009, after an operation for a tummy tuck, Devey suffered a stroke, which has left her partially paralysed.

But she kept going, kept grafting and now despite all the physical and emotional setbacks she has a portfolio of other business investments as well as being a regular on the public speaking network. The Sunday Times Rich List estimates her personal wealth at about £50million and she has ambitions to move into politics.

With homes in Florida, Spain and Marrakesh, as well as a wing of a stately home, Rangemore Hall, in Staffordshire, her upbringing in Bolton probably couldn’t seem further away.

“I'd do it all again,” she said in ‘How I Made My First Million’. “I've always lived life at a phenomenal pace, and I wouldn't know how to do it any other way.”

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Charlie Mullins: The Multi-Million Pound Plumber

Charlie Mullins, founder of Pimlico Plumbers

Charlie Mullins was worth around £49million according to the Sunday Times Rich List last year. A far cry from the “two bob a day” he started out earning, while helping a local plumber in the 1960s. But it was the lessons he learnt then as a plumber’s mate that have been the foundation of his success.

And what a success. Mullins’ business – Pimlico Plumbers – made £1.2million in the year to 31 May 2011, almost double the £688,000 it made the year before. The company also donated nearly £100,000 to charity.

It’s hard to begrudge straight-talking Mullins his achievements when you consider that he started life on the tough Rockingham estate in London’s Elephant & Castle.

Aged nine he began bunking off school and working for a North London plumber called Bill Ellis. He has said since that his business principles were modelled on what he learnt from Ellis.

“When I was growing up he was my biggest inspiration and he still is today. The success of Pimlico Plumbers is all down to that one man,” Mullins wrote on his personal blog Charlie Pipes Up in an appeal to Ellis to get in touch, the pair having lost contact years ago.

Learning his trade

Whether Mullins’ success is down to Ellis or not, he’s certainly done well for himself. He left school at 15 with no academic qualifications and embarked on a four-year plumbing apprenticeship. Once qualified he started working for himself, starting out with a bag of second-hand tools, before setting up a plumbing firm in a basement in – guess where – Pimlico.

Right from the beginning when he was a one-man band, Mullins wanted to distance himself from plumbers with a reputation for unreliability and overcharging. Instead of just being a bog standard plumber he planned to do things “the right way” – such as doing his best to turn up on time and treat his customers fairly.

More than 30 years later the main principle behind Pimlico Plumbers remains the same. The company prides itself as providing a high-priced, high-quality service and has been dubbed the “celebrities’ plumber” with clients including Hugh Grant and Keira Knightley. Services certainly don’t come cheap with customers charged £80 to £200 an hour depending on the time of day and type of job required.

The company’s 150 distinctive vans are commonplace on the streets of London. Some have personalised number plates including the registrations LAV 1, W4 TER, DRA 1N, and B1 DET.

Not all plain sailing

There have been a few bumps in the road though; the business was badly hit by the recession in the early 1990s with Mullins saying he became more “ruthless” as a result, especially in regard to staff.

In 2009 the firm became involved with a legal dispute with rival firm Service Corps. Set up by Steve Cosser, an Australian TV executive, Service Corps was accused of stealing Pimlico's celebrity client list as well as poaching staff. Services Corps collapsed in January 2010 following the legal action and pinned a sign to its office window blaming Mullins for the firm going under.

Although 70% of the company’s work is still plumbing or heating, Pimlico Plumbers has branched out into other areas and now employs electricians, carpenters and locksmiths too. The target market remains the same though – domestic properties, small shops and offices rather than large corporations.

The Pimlico brand hasn’t moved out of London either and offers a 24/7 service from its headquarters in Vauxhall. Mullins estimates that he has about 6% of the London plumbing market – meaning the other 94% is still there for the taking.

He told business website newbusiness.co.uk that his biggest regret was not putting a professional structure in place sooner. Up until about 10 years ago Mullins was still doing everything he could himself rather than delegating work to other managers.

He puts his success down to having the right team around him, including his wife and children who all work for the company. He also employs several sons and daughters of long-serving employees.

Mullins is also a regular on our TV screens. From a 2009 appearance in the ‘Secret Millionaire’, when he went undercover as a handyman in Warrington to help three local charities, to just last week when he undertook an experiment in open salaries for the Channel 4 programme ‘Show Me The Money’.

He also is never afraid to share his opinion, on everything from the Olympics (“a waste of time and money”), benefits (“[some] people don’t have any aspirations any more”) or plans to phase out cheques (“another example of greedy bankers looking to make money at the expense of business owners”) making him a frequent presence on news channels.

Giving something back

Despite going from a council estate to a multi-million-pound mansion with a Bentley parked outside through hard work, Mullins hasn’t forgotten those with less than himself.

Mullins is committed to charity and has set up apprenticeship programmes at Pimlico Plumbers to offer young people the same chances he had.

He is also a patron of the Prince’s Trust, raises money for The Rhys Daniels Trust while he ensures his company is actively involved with fundraising for a string of other organisations.

“I’ve been a little bit fortunate and I’m delighted to be in the position to be able to help others and put something back into society and I hope it can continue for a long time to come,” as he put it himself.

A man who believes in hard work, doing a job well – not cheaply – openness and offering others the opportunities he carved out for himself, let’s hope he can prove as big an inspiration to the apprentices his company trains as Bill Ellis was to him.

Source: Yahoo! Finance

How Alan Sugar Made His Money

He’s a business guru, peer of the realm and judge and jury of hopeful entrepreneurs on ‘The Apprentice’ – but exactly how did Alan Sugar actually make his money?

From humble beginnings in London’s East End to a £770 million fortune and a ranking of 89th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2011, Alan Sugar’s is a true rags to riches tale.

Knighted in 2000 for services to business and given a peerage in 2009 as part of a new enterprise role for Gordon Brown’s government, wannabe-entrepreneurs can learn a lot from Baron Sugar of Clapton.

But it’s not all been plain sailing. Despite making millions from Amstrad and making fools of hapless candidates on the Apprentice, Sugar has also made plenty of mistakes along the way.

How he got started

Born in Hackney in 1947 and brought up in a council flat, Sugar left school at 16 and after a brief spell in the civil service, famously started selling car aerials out of the back of a van using savings of just £100. His earnings were soon outstripping those of his father, Nathan, a tailor. At the age of 21 he founded Amstrad, a name which came from his initials (Alan Michael Sugar TRADing).

Within two years he was manufacturing low-priced hi-fi turntable covers and in 1980, Amstrad was floated on the London Stock Exchange.

The 1980s were Sugar’s heyday. It was the era of home computers and the Amstrad CPC 464 proved popular despite tough competition from the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The Amstrad PCW 8256 word processor shortly followed and its success meant Amstrad’s share price and market value doubled each year.

By the time he turned 40 in 1987 Sugar was worth about £600 million and was the 15th richest person in the UK. At its peak Amstrad was valued at £1.2 billion.

No repeat success

However, the 1990s weren’t quite so lucrative for Sugar. The launch of a range of business PCs was damaged by unreliable hard disks and Amstrad took the disks’ manufacturer Seagate to court. Although Amstrad won the case, its reputation in the PC market was severely dented and the company moved instead into the games console market. But the Amstrad GX4000 couldn’t compete with consoles by Nintendo and Sega which offered a wider choice of games – another bad decision.

Diversification into the telecoms market followed in 1993 with a PDA called PenPad and later a combined telephone and email device called the e-m@iler. Neither sold well and in 2007 Amstrad was sold to BskyB for £125 million, a fraction of its peak value. Initially Sugar planned to continue to play a part in the business – which by then made set-top boxes for Sky – but he stood down as chairman the following year.

As well as business, Sugar is a big football fan and teamed up with Terry Venables to buy Tottenham Hotspur in 1991. Although he helped the club out of a financial hole, his involvement didn’t go down well with Spurs fans and his relationship with Venables turned sour. He sold his majority stake in Spurs in 2001 and the remainder in 2007, citing his time at the club as “a waste of my life”.

Locking in his wealth

By this time he had several other companies up and running under his holding company Amshold. Founded in 1993 and run by his son Daniel, Amsair offers business and executive jet charters. Daniel Sugar also oversees Amsprop, a property investment firm. It owns the IBM South Bank building and is the company Simon Ambrose, winner of the 2007 series of ‘The Apprentice’, went to work for (although he has since left).

Winners of the 2008 and 2009 series of ‘The Apprentice’ (Lee McQueen and Yasmina Siadatan) both went to work at another of Lord Sugar’s companies, Amscreen, which sells advertising space on digital signage. Amsceen is run by Lord Sugar’s other son Simon.

Formed in 1975 and acquired by Amstrad in 1994, Viglen is now Lord Sugar’s only IT company. Viglen is run by Bordan Tkachuk who makes regular appearances on ‘The Apprentice’. Viglen’s headquarters in St Albans also plays a part in The Apprentice, providing the scene for the “walk of shame” when the fired candidate departs in a taxi.

Turning success into fame

‘The Apprentice’ made Sugar a television star as well as business guru. Starting in 2005, the reality TV show saw candidates compete for a £100,000 job with one of Sir Alan’s companies, and later a business partnership with the man himself. Unsuccessful applicants were sent on their way with the non-negotiable “you’re fired” accompanied by Sugar’s famous pointing finger of doom.

Contrary to his on-screen Mr Grumpy persona, Sugar is pretty generous with his cash. He donates his BBC fee for presenting ‘The Apprentice’ to Great Ormond Street Hospital as well as his pay for appearing in adverts for National Savings and Investments. He also allegedly returns his £200 Winter Fuel Allowance, an annual sum given out to all over 60s.

Despite giving money away, the serial entrepreneur still has enough left to own mansions in Essex, Spain and Florida which he can fly between in one of his two private jets worth a combined £33.5 million. His fleet of expensive cars include a Land Rover, Bentley, Ferrari and a Rolls Royce Phantom.

The secret to his success, according to him

Lord Sugar also negotiated his own book deal for an undisclosed sum with Pan Macmillan. His autobiography ‘What You See Is What You Get’ was a best seller in 2010.

In the book Lord Sugar reveals the secret of his success. His method involves watching what the market leaders are doing, making better and cheaper products, and selling to the mass market at cheap prices rather than the “hi market”.

In his autobiography he claims to be an “all-rounder” in his business, sitting on the production line and assembling the first units of any new models his company produced.

However, despite his millions, his business sense is not always spot on. In February 2005 he predicted that the iPod would be "dead, finished, gone, kaput" by the following Christmas. Six years later Apple reported that 300 million iPods had been sold worldwide.

But then having the ingenuity to make money from almost nothing, riding a technology boom and then having the sense to diversify in case the good times ended meant his mega-wealth is assured, even if he never has a good idea again.

Source: Yahoo! Finance

The Secrets to a Millionaire's Success

If you want to be a millionaire you have to think differently.

There's no real practical reason to ask "who wants to be a millionaire?" because the only people who won't put their hand up are religious types who've taken vows of poverty and those who are already multi-millionaires. Unfortunately, there's a big gulf between those who want it and those who do the things to make it happen.

Based on recent statistics on UK household income, millionaire-dom is not something that's going to happen for most people, even with the dubious benefits of inflation. An adult earning the median level of income (£26,200 a year in 2011) and saving an impressive 20% of that would need almost 200 years to save £1 million (excluding taxes and investment gains). It's pretty clear, then, that a would-be millionaire has to think outside the boundaries of "median" experience.

Start a business

There are certainly people who can become millionaires by working for other people, but this is not an especially good route to choose. The trouble with trying to become a millionaire by working for other people is that there are always other people siphoning off the value of whatever you produce. Say you're a hotshot salesman – although you're going to get your cut, a lot of the value you create is going to get split among a broader pool of workers, managers and the owner(s) of the business.

Start your own business, though, and you get to decide how to divide that pie. Better still, your ownership stake can become more and more valuable over time as that business becomes larger and larger. While a good employee may get raises and promotions as his or her employer grows, they'll never see the same benefits (including the appreciation in the value of the ownership interest) as the owners.

Use other people's money

One of the remarkably consistent features of stories about people who go from relatively no wealth to major wealth is the role of other people's money in making it happen. Sometimes it's start-up capital from a generous relative, or maybe it's a small business loan or venture capital.

Borrowed money can be a major force multiplier. Behind virtually every property empire is borrowed money and the use of leverage in investing (whether through buying stocks on margin, buying options or buying futures) can rapidly magnify a skilful investor's success. Of course, this cuts both ways – just as borrowed money can create a large business (or portfolio) quickly, just one mistake in an over-leveraged enterprise can bring the whole thing crashing down.

It comes down, then, to risk tolerance. Those who really want to build large wealth (and do so quickly) through business or investment will have to do so in part with other people's money.

Cultivate a valued skill

Wages respond to supply and demand just like everything else, so it is very important to cultivate a skill that is not only in demand, but scarce enough to be valuable. Architecture and law, for instance, are both specialised skills, but not necessarily rare enough to make their practitioners wealthy unless they are at the high end of their profession.

Sports is an obvious example, but most people know in their teens whether they have the rare physical gifts (and perhaps the even rarer mental discipline and dedication) to open the doors to a professional sports career, and it's not really a door that can be opened in college or later. Medicine and engineering, though, are both open to college-aged people who have the requisite abilities and the willingness to put in the effort. The services of these professionals are not only almost always in demand, but the supply is small enough that professionals here can fairly expect to become millionaires on the basis of their labours.

This is also true for unconventional skills as well. Pursuing a career as a writer, actor or professional gambler is a virtual guarantee of poverty for most people. For those who actually have the skills necessary to succeed, though, it can be their best chance of building real wealth.

Out-think or out-hustle

Lazy and self-made millionaire just don't go together. Going back to that supply-demand equation, anything that's relatively easy, convenient and accessible is going to have ample supply and relatively low payouts. Since most people don't actually want to work that hard, though, there are real wealth-creation opportunities out there for those willing to think and/or work just a little harder than average.

One option for building exceptional wealth is to out-think the majority of people out there. While pursuits like writing, investing and inventing all involve a tremendous amount of effort and dedication, there is at least some aspect of out-thinking to them all. Steve Jobs of Apple, Richard Branson of Virgin and Lord Alan Sugar all clearly worked hard to achieve success, but a lot of that success was predicated on seeing things that others didn't see and figuring out how to do them even better.

Out-hustling is an undervalued aspect of wealth creation. Success in business is often about the hustle – the willingness to make one more call or work an extra hour later. The field of "hustle" is wide, rich and fertile. You can make good money visiting auctions and reselling undervalued items, just as you can make good money from a variety of multi-level marketing programs. The question is whether you want to spend the hours it takes to drive the process forward.

Rental property is a good example. It is actually not all that difficult to find rental properties, buy them and rent them out. Do this well and it's fairly easy to earn an annual return of 8-15%. The problem is that there are a myriad of small annoyances that go with it – hassles in haggling over the purchase price, hassles in getting mortgages, hassles in getting tenants, hassles in dealing with tenants and so on. Some people just don't want to be bothered with this, but those who don't mind the annoyances can reap the rewards.

The bottom line

Having £1 million or more in net worth is still uncommon enough to be special and significant, and it doesn't often come as a by-product of luck or chance. Hard work is a virtual requisite, but so too is a willingness to take on some risk (such as starting a business or using leverage) or cultivate a rare gift (like writing or inventing). Although simple living and sound investing will help anyone build more wealth, a special level of success requires a special person who is willing to do more and risk more than most people.

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Sara Blakely: Made a Billion From Big Pants

Sara Blakely has just become a self-made billionaire, this is how (Image © PA)

It’s every woman’s secret weapon: Underwear that makes you look thinner. But while shaping underwear has slimmed and flattened women the world over, it’s also made its founder Sara Blakely a billionaire.

At 41, Sarah Blakely has just become the youngest, female, self-made billionaire in the world. Not bad for someone who failed law school admission tests twice and went on to work as a meeter-and-greeter for Disney. Her next role as a door-to-door salesperson for an office equipment supplier in Florida saw her rise through the ranks to national sales manager.

Like all the best inventions, Blakely’s epiphany came when she found she needed a product that didn’t yet exist. A side line in stand-up comedy saw her stuck with what to wear for a show one night. Her white trousers allowed her normal underwear to be seen – the dreaded VPL (visible panty line).

Blakely had the brainwave of cutting the feet out of a pair of tights (or panty hose as they are known in the US) to create a smoothing and firming effect. However, when she wore the cut off tights underneath her trousers she found the tights rolled up her legs all night.

This wardrobe malfunction meant an idea was born. At 29, Blakely invested her life savings of $5,000 (£3,190) trying to come up with something flattering to wear under white trousers. Control hosiery Spanx was born and Blakely wrote the patent herself to save money. The name itself was on the saucy side while the slogan “we’ve got your butt covered” captured department store buyers’ attention.

Blakely’s sales background played a huge part in her success. In 2007 she told Bloomberg Business Week that everything about her journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed having to be a salesperson—from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

“I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers,” she said. “My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.”

Neiman Marcus’ hosiery buyer agreed to meet Blakely for just 10 minutes, during which she pitched her idea and took the buyer to the bathroom to do a “before and after” demonstration of the product.

Six months after setting up Spanx, in 2000, Blakely sent some samples to Oprah Winfrey’s stylist and received a call from her production company saying the chat show host planned to include Spanx on her “Favourite Things Show”.

Who needs advertising? Winfrey’s recommendation saw Spanx go from a single product sold out of Blakely’s Atlanta apartment to a billion-dollar business which has made its founder part of a tiny, elite club of women worth ten figures.

Further celebrity endorsements followed form singer Gwen Stefani and style icon Sarah Jessica Parker and Spanx got covered in women’s magazines including Vogue as well as business magazines such as Forbes.

Spanx now generates almost $250million (£160million) in annual revenues with net profit margins of about 20%. And because Blakely has never received outside investment and the company remains hers and hers alone, stretchy pants have made her incredibly rich.

The company has been valued at $1billion (£638million) by four separate Wall Street investment banks. There are now 200 Spanx products sold in 11,500 department stores, boutiques and online shops in 40 countries.

As well as women’s knickers, the Spanx brand now includes bras, legwear, swimwear and menswear. TV presenter Jonathan Ross admitted to wearing a Spanx control T-shirt to disguise a few extra pounds when he hosted the British Comedy Awards last year.

Blakely prides herself on finding her own way in business, and relying on gut instinct. She didn’t have any business education and no board of advisers to give the benefit of their experience.

“Now I give speeches and I always ask: If no one showed you how to do your job, how would you be doing it?” she told Business Week. “Take a moment and ask that question. Often your way is better. Maybe it's a fresh new approach. If you are doing something the way that everyone is doing it, you are not really creating change by doing it that way.”

Married to former rapper Jesse Itzler with whom she has a two-year-old son, Blakely now owns six houses. However, she’s also pretty generous with her cash. To date she’s donated about £17.5million to charities, with a focus on those who help girls and women.

In 2006, she launched the Sara Blakely Foundation to help women through education and entrepreneurial training. The Foundation’s projects include Habitat for Humanity where the Foundation provided more than $150,000 (£96,000) in funding to build two homes for single mothers and their families through the Women Build Program in South Africa.

The program was created to encourage the involvement of women in the construction of Habitat homes. Spanx employees worked alongside students and the female homeowners for six weeks to build the houses.

Blakely has also funded scholarships for young women at CIDA (a higher education institution) in South Africa and donated $1million (£638,000) to Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy.

Source: Yahoo! Finance

Martin Lewis: From Simply Money to Loads of Money

Mandatory Credit: WENN.com - Martin Lewis Soldiering On Awards held at the London Syon Park - Waldorf Astoria Hotel - Arrivals London, England - 25.03.12 Mandatory Credit: WENN.com

From spin doctor to money saving multi-millionaire, we look at the rise of Martin Lewis.

Martin Lewis no longer needs to exercise his money saving expertise, having sold his website for £87m to Moneysupermarket.com.

Just a decade ago Mr Lewis was a little-known presenter on a 24-hour satellite television channel Simply Money. The channel was fronted by Angela Rippon, but it was Mr Lewis in his two minute slot on personal finance that caught the industry's eye.

After being picked up by Broadgate - now Broadgate Mainland - the PR company secured Mr Lewis a column in the Sunday Express. Simply Money was not a commercial success and Mr Lewis and the team were dropped to turn the channel into Simply Shopping, but the personal finance reporter retained his column at the Sunday Express.

An ex-colleague from the days of Simply Money said that although Mr Lewis had only two minutes on the channel he had so much enthusiasm it was difficult not to notice him.

"Martin articulated himself in a way that people understood, which was rare in the financial industry," he said.

Mr Lewis was born in Manchester and grew up in Cheshire. After attending the London School of Economics he worked in public relations in the City. He then attended Cardiff University to complete a postgraduate course in journalism.

Cardiff is famed for the number of BBC staff it produces, and Mr Lewis followed suit, working as business editor on Radio 4's Today programme.

It was after this, in 1999, that he joined Simply Money and then the Sunday Express. A former colleague at the Express explained that Mr Lewis was not as popular as you might expect given his accessible television persona today, but was a "bit of a geek".

"Martin was quite intense, very ambitious and an excellent networker, I am not surprised he has done so well," a former fellow journalist said.

It was while he was at the Express in February 2003 he set up MoneySavingExpert now the most popular consumer finance website in the UK, with 13 million monthly users and seven million people receiving the Martin's Money Tips email, for just £100.

While he was still at the Express, in 2007, he was rumoured to have been approached by Lloyds TSB who offered him £5m to buy the site. He turned it down on the basis that he "did not trust banks", and would worry about losing editorial control.

Before it was closed down last year, Mr Lewis had a column in the News of the World. He regularly appears on ITV's Daybreak programme, as well as Watchdog and has a weekly slot on the Lorraine show.

Mr Lewis has a monthly column in The Daily Telegraph.

He is a best-selling author, titles include The Money Diet and Three Lessons & Thrifty Ways.

Commenting on today's announcement of the sale of his website to Moneysupermarket.com, Mr Lewis said that he would be cutting down on the time he spends running the website to concentrate on his media work.

The website is being sold for £87m. Mr Lewis owns 100pc of the business and is expected to receive £35m in cash and around 22.1m shares in MoneySupermarket.com.

He intends to gift £10m to charity, including £1m which will go to Citizens Advice.

Source: Yahoo! Finance