'Poor, hungry, driven': Billionaire Michael Lee-Chin says rich people become wealthy by doing 5 simple things

When the crew asked how much he’s worth, he waved it off — “If you know what you’re worth, you’re not wealthy.” Then he listed what he thinks separates the rich from everyone else.

The five things he says the wealthy do

Lee-Chin says rich people became wealthy doing five things. Then he counted four:

• they own a few high-quality businesses,
• they make sure they understand them,
• they make sure those businesses are in strong long-term growth industries
• and they hold for the long run.

When the host asked how someone buys a business without much money, Lee-Chin added the fifth: borrow to invest. “I had to borrow to invest,” he said. “And I bought a mutual fund management company.”

So the full list is this: own a few good businesses you understand, in growing industries, use other people’s money prudently and hold them for years. It wasn’t an offhand answer, either. His firm, Portland Investment Counsel, has described the same approach for years as his “five laws of wealth creation.”

The loan that built a billion-dollar fortune

Lee-Chin got his start from borrowing.

In 1983, when he was 32, Lee-Chin borrowed $500,000 and put it all into one stock: MacKenzie Financial, the fund company he knew well. Four years later, that stake had grown about sevenfold. He used the profit to buy AIC, a small Ontario mutual fund firm.

Under him, AIC grew from under $1 million in assets to more than $15 billion, and in 2009, he sold its retail fund business to the Canadian financial services giant Manulife Financial. He still owns about 60% of National Commercial Bank Jamaica, where much of his fortune sits today.

How the pieces actually work

A couple of Lee-Chin’s laws need a closer look, because they’re the ones people tend to gloss over.

Borrowing to invest is called leverage, and it works both ways. When his MacKenzie stock rose, the borrowed money multiplied the gain. Had it fallen, he’d have owed the loan on top of the loss. It’s a bigger swing either way, which is why it tends to suit investors who can absorb a bad outcome.