Being successful, just exploit opportunity and being interested in other people's crap.... Seriously

So, how did someone like Lord Alan Sugar make his money?
Hard work and seeing opportunities.

Lord Alan Sugar and Rolls Royce

Did he go to University?  No, only the University of life.

So how did he get successful? Well, in the start by observing two key drivers for success, he saw opportunity and he was interested in other people's crap.

He saw someone throwing away rag and asked them why, so he then saw an opportunity to take their crap away and sell it. Opportunity and crap = money. Like they say in Yorkshire, 'Where there's muck, there's brass.'

But beyond that, he got successful by being in the right place at the right time, namely building products that fed consumer need.

The Amstrad Music centre with obligatory ABBA Album, both 1970's icons

In the 1970's, the new upwardly mobile class of people was forming, successful in post-war Britain (strikes allowing), an age when television was in a golden age and business was changing. The old fogeys who were in charge were retiring and giving way to the younger generation who had new ideas.

A prediction of what the home computer could look like....

How wrong could they get it!

The real game changer was the possibility that a computer could be built small and be something that you could have at home. Electronics was shrinking the size of devices and also increasing functionality in the opposite direction.

The AMSTRAD CPC64, the face of early home computing

What Alan Sugar could forsee with the shrinking of electronic machines was that the computer could be made small enough to be a home use product.

His vision was for a computer that could be used for practical work use, as an educational tool and as a tool to learn to program on.

The beauty was that this product was affordable and worked. Although the machine may be very primitive by today's standards, we can see that thirty some years on how technology has advanced greatly looking back.

Success is all about making the right connections to the right opportunities. And seeing the right opportunities. And that extends to seeing how you can profit from other people's crap!