Felix Dennis on How To Get Rich
How To Get Rich (2008)
Felix Dennis
Over a decade ago, I passed this book straight
on to my late teenage son, not because of its insights into
business (although it rings true on that account) but because of its
insights into human nature and into the world 'out there' that he was
going to have to negotiate in the coming years. Like all sons, he might not listen to his Dad (and no real reason why he should) but he might listen to 'uncle' Felix. I have no idea if he actually read it or not but I am rather proud of how he turned out (not much to do with me and a lot to his mother).
Why should have read it and why should it be read by all young adults with a mind to dabbling in the world of capitalism? Because Felix Dennis is going to stop him wasting a lot of time believing that some people are nicer and cleverer than they are or that reading those idiotic books about leadership from people who could not navigate their way to an ice cream parlour on a hot day is going to make an iota of difference to his wealth.
Self-made rich people are different but only because they are rich and have a peculiar personality type - not because they are cleverer or more intelligent than you or I. If anything, traditional intelligence and 'book-larning' are disadvantages because they distract and displace intuition. I, for example, read a great deal about Tao, Tantra and Jung (and a lot besides) while I was not trying to get rich. That, in itself, is one good reason amongst many why I am not rich but I made the right choice.
Dennis was clever, very clever (he is no longer with us) but he knew his limitations (a skill in itself). He was an acute natural psychologist and could laugh at himself. He looked at himself and others without illusion, yet with an odd sort of existentialist compassion that makes what he says in this book ring true and be useful. You get the impression that he would have quite liked it if the world was different but it is not and he adapted. So must we all.
That long preamble is necessary because this book won't make you rich at all. People like Dennis got rich because they were driven to making money. It is in their hard wiring. Society can stop such people and constrain them from wealth creation but it cannot create them at will out of the raw stock of society. Government funding of business education is useful in improving technical skills and management but the best thing it can do to increase innovation is to remove constraints and get out of the way - and I consider myself a fairly hard line socialist in many respects!
What this book might do is help you throw off the psychological and social constraints, especially fear and the carping negativity of others, that hold you back if you are on the cusp of entrepreneurship (and oh how I could have done with that sort of support in my deadly family circumstances of thirty years ago).
More usefully still, it will make it crystal clear that, if you don't have a certain drive and ability to handle fear, you really should not bother. You should stop dreaming uselessly of what could be or might have been and just get on with your life as either a functionary in the system or as a creative in some field of endeavour in which you have certain talent. Or be poor but die honest and happy.
Dennis makes it brutally clear that having money does not bring happiness - not in a moralistic condemnation of wealth per se (it certainly brings a lot of pleasure and experience and he clearly respects the erotic personal service workers who helped him in this respect). True happiness, once a modicum of security is achieved, is about who you are and how you relate to the world regardless of how many things you have.
Why should have read it and why should it be read by all young adults with a mind to dabbling in the world of capitalism? Because Felix Dennis is going to stop him wasting a lot of time believing that some people are nicer and cleverer than they are or that reading those idiotic books about leadership from people who could not navigate their way to an ice cream parlour on a hot day is going to make an iota of difference to his wealth.
Self-made rich people are different but only because they are rich and have a peculiar personality type - not because they are cleverer or more intelligent than you or I. If anything, traditional intelligence and 'book-larning' are disadvantages because they distract and displace intuition. I, for example, read a great deal about Tao, Tantra and Jung (and a lot besides) while I was not trying to get rich. That, in itself, is one good reason amongst many why I am not rich but I made the right choice.
Dennis was clever, very clever (he is no longer with us) but he knew his limitations (a skill in itself). He was an acute natural psychologist and could laugh at himself. He looked at himself and others without illusion, yet with an odd sort of existentialist compassion that makes what he says in this book ring true and be useful. You get the impression that he would have quite liked it if the world was different but it is not and he adapted. So must we all.
That long preamble is necessary because this book won't make you rich at all. People like Dennis got rich because they were driven to making money. It is in their hard wiring. Society can stop such people and constrain them from wealth creation but it cannot create them at will out of the raw stock of society. Government funding of business education is useful in improving technical skills and management but the best thing it can do to increase innovation is to remove constraints and get out of the way - and I consider myself a fairly hard line socialist in many respects!
What this book might do is help you throw off the psychological and social constraints, especially fear and the carping negativity of others, that hold you back if you are on the cusp of entrepreneurship (and oh how I could have done with that sort of support in my deadly family circumstances of thirty years ago).
More usefully still, it will make it crystal clear that, if you don't have a certain drive and ability to handle fear, you really should not bother. You should stop dreaming uselessly of what could be or might have been and just get on with your life as either a functionary in the system or as a creative in some field of endeavour in which you have certain talent. Or be poor but die honest and happy.
Dennis makes it brutally clear that having money does not bring happiness - not in a moralistic condemnation of wealth per se (it certainly brings a lot of pleasure and experience and he clearly respects the erotic personal service workers who helped him in this respect). True happiness, once a modicum of security is achieved, is about who you are and how you relate to the world regardless of how many things you have.
Getting rich is not in itself an automatic path to
happiness. It is perhaps just another neurotic drive much like that of the
politician who all entrepreneurs (including Dennis) affect to despise. For some it buys a better class of misery. Others understand this truth about happiness and wear their wealth lightly once the cash is in the bank. They learn to be happy doing something else. Of course, a few may be 'happy' (or evade a conversation about happiness) by simply 'doing', making money as a process until death comes at the end of the conveyor belt. Others still will concentrate on the meaning a project brings them so that the money is secondary.
But if you want pleasure and experience, need excitement and to 'feel the fear' and you see anything and anyone as potential tools to the satisfaction of your desires, then entrepreneurship is for you. Dennis' book will, if read with attention, do a great deal to point out all those mistakes that a live wire will make (and will probably make anyway because entrepreneurs will also tend not to listen to their Dads) long before they have to be made.
Unlike most of the boring ghosted and whitewashed 'how I did it and aren't I wonderful' books from senior managers and, that dread word, 'leaders'. Dennis details his mistakes and errors of judgements - that alone is worth the price.
Would it have made a difference to me if I had had this book and its basic wisdom in, say, 1979? I doubt it. The book is accurate and resonant only because, as a very minor lifestyle entrepreneur myself, my drives are very different from Mr. Dennis' and his ilk. I would have valued Mr. Dennis in 1979 because of his brutal insights into what people are about and why they do what they do. He would have saved me a lot of wasted time being nice to people who were useless or malign. But it would not have changed my essential dilettante nature, talented and effective though I am in many other ways.
Rightly, he has very harsh words for the whiner who blames others - especially his family - for not being rich: it doesn't work like that. I can have a legitimate go at my own upbringing (not my current lot but the preceding crowd) on grounds of the provision of basic security and happiness but not on the grounds of stopping me being rich, only on the grounds of undermining my will to be free and choose my own path (though that did not stop me in the end, merely lost me a couple of decades).
To get rich, you have to think money is important but not in itself (it is just a scam like all absurd abstract concepts such as the nation or the brand). You have to believe in it as a marker of self-worth and a necessary tool for self-pleasuring because of a driving need for external stimulation and to be the centre of attention, the ordering force in your little world ... the rest is a mere pipe dream. Otherwise, you should just sell your soul to the company store or, like me, follow crazier dreams and take different risks rather than go down Dennis' path.
So I strongly recommend this book. It is a fast read. You can skip the poetry if that is not your thing (it certainly was Dennis' thing in self-indulgent mode but, hey, when you were worth the millions he was, who did he have to please?) although sometimes a poem makes a point well.
But if you want pleasure and experience, need excitement and to 'feel the fear' and you see anything and anyone as potential tools to the satisfaction of your desires, then entrepreneurship is for you. Dennis' book will, if read with attention, do a great deal to point out all those mistakes that a live wire will make (and will probably make anyway because entrepreneurs will also tend not to listen to their Dads) long before they have to be made.
Unlike most of the boring ghosted and whitewashed 'how I did it and aren't I wonderful' books from senior managers and, that dread word, 'leaders'. Dennis details his mistakes and errors of judgements - that alone is worth the price.
Would it have made a difference to me if I had had this book and its basic wisdom in, say, 1979? I doubt it. The book is accurate and resonant only because, as a very minor lifestyle entrepreneur myself, my drives are very different from Mr. Dennis' and his ilk. I would have valued Mr. Dennis in 1979 because of his brutal insights into what people are about and why they do what they do. He would have saved me a lot of wasted time being nice to people who were useless or malign. But it would not have changed my essential dilettante nature, talented and effective though I am in many other ways.
Rightly, he has very harsh words for the whiner who blames others - especially his family - for not being rich: it doesn't work like that. I can have a legitimate go at my own upbringing (not my current lot but the preceding crowd) on grounds of the provision of basic security and happiness but not on the grounds of stopping me being rich, only on the grounds of undermining my will to be free and choose my own path (though that did not stop me in the end, merely lost me a couple of decades).
To get rich, you have to think money is important but not in itself (it is just a scam like all absurd abstract concepts such as the nation or the brand). You have to believe in it as a marker of self-worth and a necessary tool for self-pleasuring because of a driving need for external stimulation and to be the centre of attention, the ordering force in your little world ... the rest is a mere pipe dream. Otherwise, you should just sell your soul to the company store or, like me, follow crazier dreams and take different risks rather than go down Dennis' path.
So I strongly recommend this book. It is a fast read. You can skip the poetry if that is not your thing (it certainly was Dennis' thing in self-indulgent mode but, hey, when you were worth the millions he was, who did he have to please?) although sometimes a poem makes a point well.
But you know as you read it that he knew that he could not take it with him when he finally ceased to exist. It turns out that he had a thing about trees so that's where his legacy money went. He had planted a million trees by 2013. How very English ... it could as easily have been donated to dogs, I suppose.
By all means photocopy the "eight secrets to getting rich" and stick it on your wall if you are serious about business, let alone getting rich. But the heart of the book lies in one injunction - applicable whether you are a creator (like him) or creative - face fear and make it work for you. Otherwise, you might just as well be the man who switches the trains from track to track without having to know what is in the cattle trucks ... and then sleep soundly at night until you die, grey but calm, in the arms of your loving family.
By all means photocopy the "eight secrets to getting rich" and stick it on your wall if you are serious about business, let alone getting rich. But the heart of the book lies in one injunction - applicable whether you are a creator (like him) or creative - face fear and make it work for you. Otherwise, you might just as well be the man who switches the trains from track to track without having to know what is in the cattle trucks ... and then sleep soundly at night until you die, grey but calm, in the arms of your loving family.