I was so skint that I had to borrow money for KFC… now I’m worth £2billion after spotting easy business opportunity
TYCOON Robert Bull is a billionaire Bob chalet builder.
He’s 88th on the UK Rich List, is worth £2 billion and has made more money building more single-story homes than anyone else in the UK.
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Bob and his beautiful fiancée live in a £10million mansion with a three-lane bowling alley and six double garages to house his £4million collection of 12 supercars.
But unbelievable, just seven years ago, he couldn’t afford the price of a takeaway.
In the 100-foot-long kitchen at his home near Southampton, Bob told The Sun how he went bankrupt for £3.5 million.
And he only realized he was in big financial trouble when he took his two sons to KFC and discovered he couldn’t afford it.
Bob, 46, says: “I plugged the card in and it didn’t work. The next card doesn’t work either.
“I was pushing my youngest, Jack, in the pram. I put my food back and I said to my son Bobby, ‘Do you have any money?’
“I had to borrow the price of a KFC from my 12-year-old so my kids would have something to eat.
“When the kids finished eating, I crossed the street and went into Lloyds Bank.
“I am still emotional about that now. The woman in the bank cut my card in front of me. I feel like a piece of s**t. It was my worst day, and I hate it.”
Bob’s grandfather started a mobile park business after World War II and his father Jack, 75, became a millionaire but lost everything in an accident in the 1990s.
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Together with a business partner, Bob ran the country’s second-largest mobile park group until the company ran into trouble in 2016.
Bob said: “I was lonely, miserable and depressed. There was a lot of shame and it broke me down. I borrowed money from people I knew from my childhood and lost it.
“It kills me because everyone I talk to says, ‘You let me down. It broke my heart and made me cry.”
After three months of not being able to work because of depression, Bob discovered a hole in the housing market and came up with the idea to turn mobile parks into villages with bungalows for people who wanted to sell their homes and narrow the area.
He would buy their old houses at market value and sell them a prefab wooden house in a new community, each with a driveway, garden, and shed. There are no fees, and buyers keep equity from the sale of their home.
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Bob said: “My dad retired and helped me raise £9.7m and within a year the business was worth £100m.
“They can take everything from you but not your know-how.”
In 2017, his company, RoyaleLife, built 20 bungalows on a site near Southampton, held an open day and sold them all.
In a year he sold 100 new bungalows and said: “I paid back every penny I owed and one of the people who sued me for £76,000 and took me to bankruptcy court, we bought his business two years ago for £43 million.”
Today, Bob’s company is worth £4 billion and employs 2,000 workers.
He plans to build 2,000 eco-friendly bungalows a year, each priced from under £200,000 to more than half a million dong. Bob plans to move to Scotland next year.
In the corner of his three-acre garden – guarded by two security guards and a pair of Dobermann guard dogs – was a caravan, to remind Bob where it all started.
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At the door, we meet a former Royal Navy butler, who once looked after the Lord of the Seas and spent ten years at the British Embassy in Iraq.
He led us into the center of the house, a large kitchen with two TV screens and a 30-foot marble island.
A swimming pool, sauna and gym are located at one end and a 22-seat dining table at the other.
Bob said: “The first time I saw this house, I thought, ‘I can’t tell this guy how beautiful it is, I have to lower the price’.
“Then I walked into this kitchen and said, ‘Look, I have to be honest, I’ve been trying to play in this house for about half an hour.
“’I’ll have it. Don’t bother talking about it. I won’t bid you’, because there’s no point.
“All I said to him was, ‘I want everything, including the cutlery. You move out with your clothes’.
It’s been seven years since Bob had his car repossessed in bankruptcy proceedings.
Today, his six garages house a collection of 12 supercars, including five Rolls, two Lamborghinis — an Aventador and a Urus — plus a Ferrari GTS clocked at 211 mph. .
Bob said: “It’s all special. You can’t just go to the garage and buy them, they have body kits, unusual colors or they have extended engines. We also have the fastest turbo Porsche 911 in the world.”
Bob’s other love in life, his fiancée, Norwegian businessman Sara Nilsen, 30, said: “By the way, it was called a ‘widow machine’ before he adapted it. I don’t know why he did that.
Former local councilor Sara with 26-inch blonde hair has designed a unique £43 brand of hairbrushes to stimulate hair growth.
The couple met at a bar in Mayfair in 2019 after Bob went to see his bankers but the two are in a relationship.
A year later, Bob called Sara, who was in Kristiansund, Norway, not far from the hometown of Manchester City ace Erling Haaland.
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Bob, who has been married twice, said: “I wasn’t looking for anything serious but we talked and laughed for hours.
Sara said: “I was telling him how I was attacked and bitten by a 1,100 lb pig when I went with my mother to inspect an animal for her farm in Norway.
“I was just discharged from the hospital not long ago and he sent me some flowers.”
Soon they met in London and fell in love.
Bob said: “I weighed more than four stones at the time. I knew I was over my weight because she was so beautiful – everywhere we went, people looked at her.
“Sara looks like a movie star but she is very kind and emotional.
“When she first cuddled me, I’ve never felt like this before. We have a lot in common. And she’s funny.
“You could carry the world on your shoulders in the morning and she might say something that tickles me. I started laughing and started working with a different mood.
“I have two beautiful children and relationships may not be as they should be, but now I have someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.
“I want to enjoy the kids I already have and I want a bigger family.”
The couple also have a £1million home in Sara’s hometown in Norway which they are building.
And last weekend, Sara took Bob to the vineyard in the South of France, where they made his favorite wine, Châteauneuf du Pape, and continued on to St Tropez to mark his 46th birthday.
She said: “He is really a very generous, cheerful and kind guy. When we met, he was unhappy and nervous.
“He worries about everyone in his life. I said ‘All I want is stability and someone who loves me’. I know he wants it too.
“In the past, I was with someone who was so jealous and possessive that it felt like I was in prison.
“When I held Bob’s hand, I felt his longing to be touched. I thought ‘I’ll make you the best I can. You will look and feel better about yourself.
“We will do your teeth, do your hair and help you lose weight.” And he has.
“I’m so proud of him. He worries a lot about the business. I said to him ‘What’s the worst that could happen? You lose everything. You’ll still have me, we will start over.
