A business owner and author who works 100 hours a week and turned over £170,000 in one year has given his tips for financial success.

Samuel Leach, 28, from Watford grew up in a background of financial difficulties and shared a single room with his father and brother. Their support made him want to find a way to give back.

He said: “My parents divorced from a young age, but they supported me through thick and thin. I spent my time and career to repay them back and look after them financially.”

Mr Leach discovered his chance to make some money at 20 years old when he went to West Herts University to study Marketing and Advertising.

He said: “While I was there, I was looking at the highest paying jobs and I found an oil rig, but I needed ten years of experience before I could apply.

“Instead, I started looking into stocks and trading. I decided to take the risk and used my student loan and luckily for me, I didn’t lose.”

Watford Observer:

From his student loan, he managed to turn £2,000 into £178,000 over the course of a year and never looked back since.

He added: “I began to become bored of university very quickly after being in the markets. In the final year that was the point I had lost all my passion.

“In my last year, I was working for a private bank in London and still doing my own trading. They wanted to keep me on at the end of a summer internship.

“They agreed to keep me on at a full-time salary, only working two days a week and I could still be at university. But it didn’t go well, there was a lot of stress.”

Before long, Mr Leach was holding a lecture at his university teaching people how to trade stocks.

His FCA-accredited business Samuel and Co Trading was launched in 2012.

Since 2016, his company has taught more than 3,000 people from 63 countries how they can potentially build their wealth through a second income from trading, or by becoming a trader full-time.

He added: “My business is teaching people to trade whilst still trading myself and it grew massively.

Watford Observer:

“We give people the chance to trade and we do 50-50 profit shares. We expanded globally to areas such as New York.”

Mr Leach works 100 hours a week and hopes to retire when he is 32.

He has just launched his book, The Formula for Success: How to Win at Life Using Your Own Personal Algorithm.

He added: “My followers on social media were asking me how I got where I am now so I decided to write a book to explain it all.

“To be honest I was going to write a book for future generations. If anything happened to me, I wanted people to know how I’ve done it.

“I used to read a lot of self-help books but they had never gone into a method, such as a step by step.

“I work with algorithms everyday in stocks and I decided to put it into a theory of what you need to apply to your life to achieve what you want.”

Mr Leach detailed the 'leach theory' as an algorithm where you pick specific traits from five successful people, find what they have in common and apply them to yourself.

He added: “Suppose if I was to simplify it, everyone has behavioural traits, if I was to meet you in person I would put out my hand to shake yours.

Watford Observer:

“It is a behavioural trait almost like a pattern or an algorithm. Everyone has the capability to create patterns and we naturally do them.

“Say you’re earning the same amount or more than the five closest people to you. It's hard to push past that.

“You want to identify with people that resemble what you want in life, that is the leach theory.

“If you admire Steve Jobs and Elon Musk you’re going to have cross over in their traits, such as how they approach risk.

“You need to think how you can implement that trait into your life and create a physical plan.”

Mr Leach hopes to focus on charity work once he retires and is working on launching a charity called Overwatch this year to help with the issues of plastic pollution in the ocean.

When asked about his advice for future business owners, he said: “Get used to having sleepless nights. Hard work is not easy.

“If you want to get into stocks, get the understanding that you need to have a clear vision and understanding of the basic of finances.

“Success isn’t created overnight, it's created over many years.”