Testing beliefs about who can make money

Simon Carswell, Finance Correspondent, meets one of Britain's leading business advisers who is challenging assumptions on employing people with disabilities

Some 49 per cent of Britain's self-made millionaires were dyslexic Simon Carswell, Finance Correspondent, meets one of Britain's leading business advisers who is challenging assumptions on employing people with disabilities

René Carayol and his family have been challenging assumptions for years, ever since his father moved the family to Britain from Gambia in the 1960s.

Carayol snr was a diplomat and when he arrived in Britain four decades ago he found "outrageous prejudice". His son, a business adviser who has written extensively and lectured widely on leadership, now tries to challenge other assumptions, primarily those concerning businesses and money issues.

René Carayol was in Dublin last month to speak at a conference called "Challenging Assumptions" organised by the Association for Higher Education Access and Disability (Ahead).

He is probably best known as the presenter of BBC's Pay Off Your Mortgage and Mind of a Millionaire. He is also the author of Corporate Voodoo and My Voodoo books.

Ireland needs all the employment resources it can get, says Carayol, and so Irish businesses need to see that there is a place for people with disabilities in their workforces.

"Ireland is a wonderful place with a booming infrastructure but there are people being missed on your doorstep because they look a little different and they act a little different, but the difference is Ireland's opportunity. Talent comes in many different packages."

He says that of the people with disabilities who participated on a recent Irish mentoring programme, the vast majority were kept on by their employers when the programme ended. "That says we have got some things to learn. When we started to work together, businesses realised how good they were. It is proximity that creates awareness."

Carayol refers to a recent visit to Johannesburg in South Africa where he had to speak at a customer service centre. After walking around the centre for some time he realised that something was different about the centre - everyone working there was blind.

"Their listening skills were so developed. I realised that when you have a problem you have to have people to listen to you. What the centre really wanted was the people could listen."

Carayol has served as a board member of major companies, including IPC Electric and Pizza Hut, and has worked in the public sector with the British Inland Revenue.

He was awarded an MBE in 2004 for outstanding service to the business community. He has provided leadership support to the delivery unit of the British prime minister.

One of his most recent television appearances has been as presenter of BBC's Did They Pay Off Their Mortgage in Two Years?

He says that in the television series he had to challenge a widely held assumption that many people felt a mortgage would take several decades to pay off. He says you could end up paying £100,000 in interest on a mortgage of £100,000 over 25 years, so if you could pay off your mortgage in two years, why would you not do this?

For many people this might seem an impossible task but Carayol set about ways to help people to do this, simply by encouraging them to earn more and spend less.

He took the case of a ballet dancer who had a mortgage of £48,000 on a property that was worth £180,000. Carayol calculated that he needed to earn an extra £2,000 a month to pay off the mortgage in two years. The dancer started running women's fitness classes, charging £20 each a class. About 120 women signed up to the first class, 150 for the second.

Carayol was eventually forced to fire the dancer from the programme because "he didn't want to pay off the mortgage - he just wanted to be on television".

The programme has hit a nerve with some, however. Last month Carayol was stopped by a man at the taxi rank at Dublin Airport who showed him figures on how he was going to pay off his mortgage in five years. "Maybe we are challenging assumptions," he says.

However, he adds that people in Ireland and Britain don't like talking about money. "We still find money vulgar. We whisper about money and sometimes we don't even tell our loved ones what we earn."

He says people often need to "unlearn and relearn again" when it comes to assumptions and they need to focus on what they do brilliantly.

Carayol discovered this during the making of his BBC programme Mind of a Millionaire.

In Britain there are 70,000 self-made millionaires among a population of 60 million. Carayol found that 49 per cent of self-made millionaires were dyslexic, while 57 per cent came from dysfunctional or deprived backgrounds.

"There was a time when they could not quite believe in themselves. They were told they were no good. This gave them the drive to succeed. They became obsessed with success and the drive because they have been knocked down in the past and they want to achieve success."

However, Carayol has found that entrepreneurs were often good at starting a new venture but not so good at managing business long-term because they are not so good at leading a team and because they are too risky.

Carayol says that like some entrepreneurs, people with disabilities are committed and talented, and feel they have something to prove. "We have got to look for talent in unorthodox places. Our battle for talent is getting much tighter."