Aaron Strauss: You're listening to The Dealmakers’ Edge with A.Y. Strauss, diving deep into stories behind commercial real estate leaders.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Dealmakers’ Edge. Today, we have a very special guest, Alfie Best, who is the founder of Wyldecrest Parks. Born in a caravan in Leicestershire, Alfie Best comes from a Romani Gypsy family. At the age of 14, he became an independent businessman, starting out buying and selling cars and vans. At age 20, he took on a job at a phone shop. And then after that, he started his own business to scale in the phone industry. He later sold that business and started in the world of real estate investing, buying his first mobile home park in Essex in 2001. And today he's the largest operator of residential holiday parks, more than a hundred mobile parks across the UK. And it's valued well over a billion pounds. The business has won multiple awards. Alfie is an endless stream of wisdom and inspiration and I hope you guys all enjoy this amazing episode.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Dealmakers’ Edge. Today, we have a very, very special guest that I was privileged to meet before, Alfie Best, who is going to share his amazing story. And he is giving back to so many people today, running a pretty large business, headquartered in the UK. And Alfie, really appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. You have so many obligations, but maybe for the listeners, you can introduce yourself, get into your story, your origins. It's such a fantastic story.

Alfie Best: That's very good of you to say and every time I hear somebody say that, it's an honor and a privilege. Look, I'm nobody. I'm just somebody that's built a business from the ground up. And in the UK, it got a lot of coverage at one point of building a business, which is worth in excess of 1.2 billion today and building it from… completely from the ground up. It's not a common story in the UK, whereas I tend to find in the US it is more common and much more celebrated, where we seem to have a glass ceiling, in the UK and in Europe that you're not allowed to break through. And when you do break through, you become, I don't want to use the word a target, but there are phrases that carry throughout history, which are very, very, very classic. And I think we've lost those in a lot of European countries, like in America, you have the American dream. In London and the UK, we used to have the streets are paved with gold. You know, we've lost that. And I think it is so important to retain, in a culture, that work ethic equals success. You know, I have a saying that there is a magic water to success. And there really is. And it's called sweat. And the more you effort that you put in and I think that's no better seen than people like Elon Musk. No matter where he was on the ladder, he realized he still had to sleep on the conveyor belt, when there was a problem that needed solving. And the business that we built is a company called Wyldecrest Parks. We have 120 parks across the UK. In comparison to counterparts, I would say we're the best in class. And we tripled their size and our largest competitor has got 53 parks. And my goal was to not only be the UK and Europe's largest residential park operator, but it was actually to be the global park operator. And then I just didn't feel that I could do that in the UK. And I am coming to the US. And we are going to establish businesses there. Not because I see myself coming there and thinking, you know, I'm going to show the American audience how it's done. I think if anything, they'll be showing me how it's done. But what I can promise, I won't be smarter than everybody else who is there, but I will certainly outwork everybody else that is there. And what I lack in some qualities I gain for in others.

Aaron Strauss: Absolutely.

Alfie Best: And you may say, why America? It's got nothing to do with the country. It's all about the mindset. And celebrating success is so key. And if you're not celebrating it, you're being put down for it. And I think we have some fabulous love or hate Trump, I'm a fan, but love or hate him, he celebrates America. And for me, everything is about celebrating business, celebrating the country you're in. And if your counterparts and people at the side of you can do well in life, it leads the way for all of us to do well.

Aaron Strauss: Agreed and well said. For those not familiar with your story, it's highly unique. I know you've told it many times, but you know, I know you became a businessman at 14. You got into the van and car business and you grew that successfully.

Alfie Best: That's correct.

Aaron Strauss: What was the initial bug? You know, how'd you get started? I know when we spoke last time, there wasn't an expectation for you to go into business. It wasn't something common that you saw around you, but you just had this drive that came from somewhere. Maybe you could talk about those early years.

Alfie Best: Let me say this, I come from what I would regard as an underprivileged family in monetary terms. As for love and appreciation and a great life, I think I was the richest kid on the block. But monetary terms, we were definitely the poorest people on the block. And I was born in a caravan on the side of a road, in a place called Lutterworth in Leicestershire. And we were gypsies and we still are. You know, what's in the blood is in the veins, comes out in the soul. Just because a horse is born in a field doesn't make it a cow. Just because a horse is born in a stable doesn't turn it into a dog. We have to accept the cards we're dealt in life, but it's how we play them. I started off my very first business when I was 14, buying and selling vans and trucks from auctions. I'm not sure the geographics of people that would understand the UK, but in Wales, Land Rovers are the vehicle. So I'd buy Land Rovers from London, send them to Wales and sell them there in an auction and buy automatic cars and bring them to London. You know, I found the niche, only small, niches, but they worked. I did that up until I was 20. And to be fair with you, I was pretty successful. I would actually say that I was successful to the point that I started to believe in my own hype. By 1990, we'd amassed a £2 million property portfolio with £700,000 worth of mortgages and businesses that were flying. I was driving a brand new 911 Porsche. To be fair with you, every bit of it was blood, sweat and tears that I'd earned myself. But then, in 1990, came the Great Recession, I would call it, where interest rates went from 8% to 16%. So it was 100% uplift and the property prices tumbled and I was in this horrible place called negative equity. When you physically blood, sweat and tears to build businesses, and what businesses do is they strip away from you your time, you wake up one day, you're 25 years old. You wake up the next day and people say, my God, that was an overnight success and you're 50. Time is the one commodity which is so precious. That's why I work so hard. I make sure that I get two hours out of one, because you can only spend it once. So make sure you're spending time twice and you get twice as much in. And I went through a very, very painful, difficult time. I came very, very, very close to going bankrupt. And I sort of just held on by the skin of my teeth. I moved out of the house that I was living in, rented it out, so I could pay the mortgage. I moved in the back of an Escort van with a mattress and did what I needed to do to get by. Would I want to do it again? Absolutely not. Did I enjoy doing it then? Absolutely not. But I did what I had to do. And the masteries, what you have to do, masters you. And they're the true, true benefits of a real person's metal. Can he do it? Can he keep building? Can he keep moving forward when he's down? Not when you're up, not when you've been helped up, can you move forward when you're down? And that's the key. Because when you're down, if you don't keep moving, you're going to drown. It's like treading water. You have to keep moving. And there's no better synergy than the scientists that tested drowning mice. And he put a mouse in a jar and it paddled away, I think for 15 or 20 minutes maximum and drowned. So he repeated the exercise and put another mouse in, but just before it was about to drown, he pulled it out and then he put it back in again after it caught his breath. And he did that five or six times over and over again. The mouse or mice that he'd actually saved and put back in, continued for two hours. And the reason they continued for two hours, they thought they were going to be saved again. The moral of this story is, if you give up, you're going to drown. Just keep going. You never know what's coming at you to pick you up, push you along. Anyway, after I'd picked myself up, I got into the mobile phone industry. We built a phenomenal business, built 18 stores and we sold that out to a subsidiary of Vodafone and made five million pounds four years later. So you never know what's coming. It wasn't as easy as I'm saying, but when I look back, it was an overnight success. Then I went into commercial property. Commercial property, we built up a fairly good portfolio. Enjoyed that and loved it. And I was worth maybe five million pounds, seven million pounds at that time. And I was 28. And I thought that was all the money in the world. And this is going back in 1998. And I thought that was all the money in the world. So £5 million then would have been equivalent to approximately, I suppose, maybe £40 million or, yeah, there or thereabouts, £40 or £50 million today. And I thought that was all the money in the world. And in actual fact, it was, because you don't actually need any more than that. If you have 50 million pounds a day, you're a very, very wealthy person and that allows you to have the best life you can possibly have. It doesn't get any better than that. But every step we take in business, every step we take as a learning curve that allows us to climb that ladder, each mark of success allows us how to monitor through the field of intellectual business. What I mean by intellectual, I mean where it stops becoming with the hand and the will and becomes with the mind. And you strategically place businesses, but there's no better way to do that, when you've lived and breathed and worked with the business. And that's when we then started Wildcrest. Wyldecrest Parks is Europe's largest residential mobile home park operator. Our borrowings are 7% to our value and I'm very proud of the company on what the company has done and achieved, because we have single-handedly stood on the shoulders of other great people before us and created the solution to affordable housing. Because the homes that we sell, visually are identical to a bricks and mortar bungalow. You couldn't tell the difference. These are not for the poorer, lower class social housing, even though they are the solution to affordable housing. These are for everybody. And we have from doctors to lawyers to politicians that live on our parks, because it allows them in the UK to free up capital out of their home and then purchase a park home for sometimes, a third of the price, of a like for like bricks and mortar home. There's no stamp duty, land registration fee, band A council tax. So electricity is 28% cheaper, because you're buying it at a commercial pass-through rate. It really is a solution and it's allowed the company to thrive. But even when we bought and all of the parks that we bought, were very, very old parks, and we redeveloped a number of them, we got a lot of criticism for that. But you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. And you certainly can't improve anything by just letting it sit and do nothing. But people forget sometimes the pain, the stress and the hard work that we all put into businesses. Like I said, businesses strip your time. The reason they strip your time, those late nights that you put the effort in, those late nights, those late days, those long weekends, where you are physically working through it. Those trips that you missed, those school plays that you missed, the families that aren't there, because they think you're enjoying it. And of course you are. You wouldn't do it if you didn't, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed every minute. I wouldn't change any of it. And we're ready to go again and are going again. We're just now not pushing water up a hill. I want to go where success is celebrated.

Aaron Strauss: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing all that. I know you have so many just great philosophical views on business and life. I want to get as many out as possible. I just have to ask you a little side question. Where are you right now? I see some water in the background. Are you on a boat, perhaps? Where are you physically now?

Alfie Best: I'm sitting in the marina.

Aaron Strauss: Which marina is that? Monaco. It's home. So that's, you're on your yacht in Monaco. That's great. This is the first podcast we've ever recorded from a yacht. So you have that distinction, Alfie, amongst many other distinctions of being a first. So very exciting. Your story is unique. I know you did build a family. You have family in the business with you today. You have philanthropy initiatives you've taken on. You're mentoring a lot of people. You're traveling extensively. Maybe you could walk us through how you're spending your time these days. You're juggling a ton, but I think you have this sense of calm, where everything seems to have a place, an order to it. Maybe you could talk about how you think of your time now, which we talked about is the most precious asset. What do you want to do with your time? What are your next set of goals? You keep growing and growing. Maybe you can share along those lines.

Alfie Best: My goals are to never stop. And it's really not about the money. It's about a scorecard of how far we can go. And yes, we do do a lot of charity work. I try to do it as discreetly as possible, because I want to do it for the charities that I believe in and the causes that I believe in, not the causes that everybody else believes in. I mentor through Best of the Best. We set up a company platform, which we now mentor businesses and we have some phenomenal mentorees on there that allow us to take people through different stages. And I always say this, don't judge me by my successes, judge me by my mistakes that I handled, judge me by my problems that were difficult that I dealt with. It's easy to judge me by my successes, because I only had to be successful once and we can all celebrate being successful once. The trouble is people forget the real celebration is getting up and going again, not sitting back, when everybody thinks you're out and you've lost. The real people, the real, real people of this world are the key people that just don't give up. That's the truest success of anything. Don't stop. So now, with the mentoring that we do and we do it on a worldwide stage, I have a lot of people that come to me and say, we want to invest. My answer to them is, please, before you invest, sharpen your sword. And they ask me what I mean by that. I go, anybody can spend money. Anybody can make money, but you need to make it consistently and you need to be able to invest it consistently. Money's like water, it rolls. And if you don't embrace what you're investing in, understand it and bring something more to the table. I don't believe in blind investing. I believe in investing with knowledge, a small amount of skill set that you can work upon. I'm not saying you don't trust the experts to do it, but I have a saying that I live by and I've carried it with me all my life. Please don't trust me, as I will not trust you. But if you really want to trust me, make sure you don't and make sure you check for me. Because I say it doesn't make it right, but if I say it and you check it and it turns out to be right, you're my best friend. You're my best skill set, because what you've done is look out for me. You've looked out for us. When people say the word trust me, they're not actually saying trust me, they're saying believe me, I'm right. And of course we have colleagues around us that we trust, because we know their skill sets. But I always say, no matter how good my skillset is, check, because we make less mistakes that way.

Aaron Strauss: Well said.

Alfie Best: My best friends are always told, don't trust me. My best colleagues, don't trust me, check for me. We're going to make less mistakes when we're all checking. We're all looking out for each other. That's the true measure of somebody.

Aaron Strauss: Well said. What other lessons, just your philosophies on entrepreneurial activity, you have an abundance of amazing thoughts on this. I know, because you were on that other call we had previously, but you're mentoring somebody in your group, or many… a number of groups that you have and they're going through a struggle. Perhaps people listening to this right now are the victim of a bad deal, a bad transaction. They're on the wrong career, they're really trying to keep moving, right? Because you do need to keep moving. They're trying to get to that next rung. They're hustling. They're pushing. They're calling. Things aren't clicking for them, but they never give up. What kind of advice are you giving to that person, perhaps listening to this, who's just striving to get to that next gear, whatever that may mean for them? You know, how to continue to push through.

Alfie Best: When things are wrong, you stop and you pivot. You look at who's around you and you must cut the noise out. When things are going wrong, everybody's got a great opinion who's got nothing to lose. It is imperative, when you're climbing the mountain and you climb Everest one step at a time, whether you're successful with it, or whether you feel that you're going to fall, you must stop and pivot and look at the surroundings you're in, because that next step you take could be your last. So as much as it is that you must keep going, we all must stop and pivot. And if there is anybody out there at this moment in time that is going through that difficult point, where you feel you missed something, it was a bad deal. Whatever you do, don't allow the deal or the issue to strip you of your time and paralyze your mind. It happens to all of us. I've been in that position where it has paralyzed my mind. I couldn't think straight. The one thing I will tell you is this. It will not paralyze you. It will not cripple you. It cannot. Only you can allow it to have that power to do it. And most importantly, when you've stopped and pivoted, write down the options of the worst outcome. The worst. The worst. Write the options down for the worst. Why? That gets it out of the way. You've confronted what the worst could be. You're not panicking in your mind about, it could do this, or it could do that and oh, I'm going to… That needs to go. It's like thrashing around when the shark's coming at you. And then when you've written three of the worst outcomes, write three of the best outcomes. And then look, how do we get from A to B? And words, remember this, are fantastic when they're delivered, but they're meaningless without action. So it's great to be built up. It's great to feel good about it. But what I would say is, why am I privileged to be able to talk about such bad things? Because I've been through them twice. And they're not nice. The people that you thought were there, they're not. There's only one person going to be there. Only one. That is going to be your other half. That's the person, if you're lucky, they're going to be there.

Aaron Strauss: Well said. What are the leading indicators that you think you may need to pivot? For example, you've ridden waves, ups and downs, acquiring, growing businesses, et cetera, et cetera. When have you decided it is time to pivot, versus sometimes it’s darkest before the dawn and you need to continue down the original path? What are some of those flags, it is time to pivot?

Alfie Best: When it's too good, or when everybody's telling you how great you are. Stop, because if it's so great, it's great for them. Look at what you're missing.

Aaron Strauss: Very well said.

Alfie Best: We can all see the hardship when it comes. We can all tell when it's that, you can see clearly. I'll tell you a very quick story and this resonated with me, how a simple term can be resonated within business. I was in the shooting range in Florida and there was a deputy police officer who was the trainer to show you how to use the guns. So I said to her, I said, I really sometimes wouldn't want to be a citizen in America, I said, when I see how you really react. I said, why? I said, why are you so, so forceful? She said, sir, hope that accent's a pretty good Floridian, she said, sir, she said, you got to look out for the weirdos. And I said, but surely you can tell who the weirdos are? She said, hey guy, they're not the weirdos. And that hit me. The people that you can't see that are coming at you, are not seen, they're not the weirdos in business and they're not the weirdos in life. They're the people that are extremely charismatic, charming. They're the people, the ones that are blunt, direct, little bit off, they're the people that are normally, that have got your back. Because they're not frightened of offending or defending.

Aaron Strauss: Really great thought as always. I want to be respectful of your time, but if you could give another piece of advice, or two, to people starting out in their career besides resilience, perseverance, not believing your own hype, this intuitiveness that you've had, any other just kind of macro level themes you think you need to have in mind on a regular basis? I know you've got a lot to say on that.

Alfie Best: I don't want this to sound very tongue-in-cheek, but it is imperative. And I would ask anybody to look this up and they'll see that not only is it not just words, somehow it resonates within the universe. And I don't say that lightly. It is think big, think the big picture. Now, what do I actually mean by that? Do I mean, well, okay, let's buy a building for a million dollars? No, let's buy one for a hundred million. No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying to you is, think that you're going to be the best at what you do and lay your cards and cart out and your business plan, maybe for the first six months, but then for the next 10 years and think big. This is absolutely a true story. When I bought my very first park home estate, it was a park called Lakeview Park in Robford, which is in a London borough in a suburb, called Havering. I had my signage made for the park and around the symbol, which still sits there to this day, I put the UK's number one park operator and my whole… that was on day one and I got criticized for it immensely. You're not number one, because we had one park, so obviously we weren’t.

Aaron Strauss: You were technically, you were one of one, right?

Alfie Best: Yeah. But my point is. When I started, I meant that Wildcrest would be the biggest and I didn't want to be the biggest in the UK. I wanted to be the biggest in the world, but the problem was, I'd already gauged that in the UK with that summary, the UK's number one. Now, with the good grace and the good wind of God, when I'm… When I start again in the US, we will put the global park operator. Why? Why not? Allow everybody to laugh, because they'll be telling the stories how they met you.

Aaron Strauss: I love that. I love that. I can't wait to hear about your first purchase in the US and it'll be a big splash, I'm sure. Alfie, I could talk to you all day. I'm sure our listeners could listen to you all day, but I want to be very respectful of your time.

Alfie Best: It's been a pleasure and it's always a pleasure to discuss business. I must be a very sad person because I love it.

Aaron Strauss: No, you're not sad. You're very inspiring. You're really very unique, very inspiring. I've taken away… I can listen to you all day. Continue to have unlimited success with your mindset. I want to watch your success and hopefully you'll buy something in the U S soon. It'll be really fun to watch you. You build your empire here as well. So Alfie, enjoy summer, enjoy everything you're doing. Never stop mentoring and giving back. And we all appreciate you.

Alfie Best: Pleasure. I wish everybody success for all of us.

Aaron Strauss: Thank you, Alfie.

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