‘Poor, hungry and driven’: Billionaire businessman and investor says rich people become wealthy by following these 5 habits

When the crew asked how much he’s worth, Lee-Chin waved off the question. “If you know what you’re worth, you’re not wealthy,” he said. Then Lee-Chin laid out what he believes actually separates the wealthy from everyone else — and for someone who was born into poverty, immigrated to Canada in 1970 and studied civil engineering at McMaster University on a scholarship, the answer carries more weight than any viral clip usually does.

The five things he says the wealthy do

Lee-Chin says wealthy people become that way by following five key habits. He counted four habits on-camera — according to Lee-Chin, they:

1. Own a few high-quality businesses
2. Understand those businesses deeply
3. Make sure those businesses sit in strong long-term growth industries
4. Hold on for the long run

When the interviewer asked how someone buys a business without much money to start, Lee-Chin added the last rule:

5. Borrow to invest

“I had to borrow to invest,” he said. “And I bought a mutual fund management company.”

And his answers aren’t off-hand, either — Lee-Chin has described the same ideas for years as his “five laws of wealth creation.”

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The loan that built a billion-dollar fortune

In 1983, at age 32, he borrowed C$500,000 and put all of it into one stock: Mackenzie Financial, a fund company he knew well from his years selling mutual funds out of Hamilton, Ontario. Four years later, that stake had grown to about C$3.5 million — roughly sevenfold.

He used the proceeds to buy a small mutual fund company in Kitchener, Ontario. Renamed AIC, the firm grew under Lee-Chin from under C$1 million in assets to more than C$10 billion by 2002. The 2008 financial crisis hit the firm hard, and in 2009, Lee-Chin sold AIC’s retail fund business to Manulife Financial, one of Canada’s largest financial services companies. He held onto a 60% stake in National Commercial Bank Jamaica, which today makes up much of his fortune.

How the pieces actually work

Two of Lee-Chin’s rules — the ones people tend to skip past — deserve a closer look.

First, borrowing to invest is called leverage — and it cuts both ways. When his Mackenzie Financial stake rose, the borrowed money multiplied his gain. Had the stock fallen instead, he would have owed the loan on top of the loss. Leverage magnifies the outcome either way, which is why it tends to suit investors who can genuinely absorb a bad result. It’s not a strategy for money you can’t afford to lose.

Secondly, his advice to “own just a few” businesses stems from his belief in knowing a business inside-and-out before investing in it. Lee-Chin studies a small number of companies closely and puts his money there. Most people who don’t have the time to research individual companies that closely instead choose diversification. A low-cost index fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking something like the S&P/TSX Composite Index, for example, spreads money across hundreds of Canadian companies in a single purchase.

When asked what he’s buying now, Lee-Chin named nuclear energy. “Whenever there’s a shift in the dominant source of energy, there’s a shift in economic power,” he said, adding that he sees the shift moving “towards nuclear.”

What Canadians can do

The part of Lee-Chin’s list that holds up for almost anyone: own a few things you understand, hold them for years and let the returns compound.