Jamaican-Canadian billionaire Michael Lee-Chin has secured his first top-10 showing on Audible Canada’s Money & Finance audiobook bestseller chart, with his new book, The Way of Wealth: Stories and Strategies on My Path to a Billion, reaching No. 8.
The achievement comes as the book, published by HarperCollins Canada, gains traction across online retail platforms. On Thursday, Lee-Chin’s brother, Wayne Chen, shared screenshots showing the title had also reached No. 1 on Amazon’s Best Sellers list in the Black & African American Biographies category.
“My brother Michael Lee-Chin’s book, The Way of Wealth: Stories and Strategies on the Path to a Billion (HarperCollins Canada), is Number One on Amazon’s Black & African American Biographies bestsellers. Stories and lessons of Port Antonio and beyond. A fantastic journey,” Chen wrote. Its currently No. 51 on Wealth Management Books on Amazon.
It marks an early commercial milestone for a book that traces one of the Caribbean’s most consequential business journeys, from Port Antonio, Portland, to the upper reaches of international finance.
In The Way of Wealth, Lee-Chin examines the decisions, investment principles and personal experiences that shaped his rise from modest beginnings in Jamaica to billionaire status. Rather than presenting wealth as the product of a single breakthrough, he places emphasis on discipline, long-term thinking, calculated risk and the ability to recognise opportunities where others see uncertainty.
One of the central questions explored in the book is how a boy born to an 18-year-old mother in Port Antonio became one of the world’s most prominent Black business leaders.
Lee-Chin recounts being placed on the “dunce” side of his classroom at age nine before eventually earning one of only two full scholarships in his class. He went on to study engineering at McMaster University in Canada, a decision that preceded a career in investment management and business acquisitions.
Among the defining episodes is his decision to borrow US$500,000 to invest in a company that others had overlooked. That investment helped establish the foundation for AIC Limited, which at its peak managed approximately US$15 billion in assets.
In 2002, Lee-Chin returned to Jamaica to acquire a controlling interest in National Commercial Bank, then a struggling financial institution. The investment became one of the most significant chapters in his business career and helped establish his influence in Jamaica’s financial services sector.
Throughout the book, he returns to a philosophy shaped by the relationship between adversity and opportunity.
“I have learned that opportunities knock daily, but they often come clad in crisis,” Lee-Chin writes.
The book also sets out his Five Laws of Wealth Creation, using experiences from his career to explain the principles behind his investment philosophy.
“Everything I have built, from AIC to Portland, from financial services to nuclear medicine, has been governed by three interconnected frameworks,” Lee-Chin says. “This is not theory. It is lived experience.”
Dedicated to his mother, Hyacinth Gloria Chen, whose sacrifices helped shape his early life, The Way of Wealth is positioned as both a personal account and a practical examination of the thinking behind long-term wealth creation.
For aspiring entrepreneurs and investors in Jamaica and across the Caribbean diaspora, Lee-Chin’s account offers a perspective on how capital, education, persistence and strategic decision-making can influence economic mobility.
Lee-Chin is president and chairman of Portland Holdings and chairman of NCB Financial Group. Born in Jamaica, he moved to Canada in 1970 to study at McMaster University. His business interests have extended across financial services, media, real estate, agriculture and healthcare, while his philanthropic contributions include a landmark gift to the Royal Ontario Museum, which houses the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.
The Way of Wealth: Stories and Strategies on My Path to a Billion is available in hardcover, e-book and audiobook formats.
