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Go further than reading a person’s references. It’s such a fag, such a bloody nuisance, such a pain in the neck, to go well beyond the references and CV you’ve received, isn’t it? And yet it pays. Make an appointment with a potential employee’s last company or with a supplier’s other customers. Go and see someone there. Make nicey-nicey. Listen hard. You will discover more about your potential employee or supplier in a few minutes in this way than in hours of conversation with them.
It is impossible for the other side to tell that you are not as clever as they are if you keep your mouth shut. “Better to have the world suspect you a fool than to open your mouth and put the matter beyond doubt,” as the old saying has it.
It may appear rude to have initiated a conversation, as you have, and not to make small talk to fill in embarrassing silences. But you are not conducting the conversation to be polite. You are conducting the conversation to get rich.
Bonuses should be more than competitive, they should be tempting, generous and based ruthlessly on meritocracy and delivery. That’s the way to get employees to really focus.
Likes and dislikes should not come into it. Loyalty, effectiveness, honesty, integrity and stamina are crucial. Cleverness and cunning can be useful. Professionalism is vital.
an external candidate, a candidate from outside the company looking for a senior position, had better be at least 30 percent better than any internal candidates to get the job.
You will get the most out of any senior employee in their first year or two in a new position. After that, they enter a “comfort zone.”
If on my deathbed I had only a very short time to pass on what wisdom I have accumulated about getting rich to a son or daughter, then it would be this: Ownership Shall Be Half of the Law; Doing an Outstanding Job Shall Be the Other Half.
There is no point in owning 100 percent of a rubbish company. Whatever it is you intend to do to get rich, get good at it. Hire people who are better than you at it. Listen and learn and get better still at it.
Even if you are nothing but a scum-sucking, ambulance-chasing tort lawyer—the lowest form of pond-life that walks on its hind legs—be the best scum-sucking ambulance-chaser in town.
Capone, who would have become one of America’s greatest businessmen if he had stayed on the straight and narrow, knew better. He knew that rotten beer makes rotten business.
read his autobiography, I found myself wishing he had stayed out of the rackets and built his fortune legally.
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the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train.
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We are not engaged upon a serious business here. We are only talking about the getting of money, and, occasionally, the losing of money.
You may despair when you have broken your neck; you may despair when your only child has predeceased you; you may despair when terrible wars, famines or plagues afflict millions of innocents. But you must not despair over a simple thing like money.
What Americans wanted, as they traveled vast distances across interstate highways, was consistency, cleanliness and fast service.
Would more capital help, or would that be throwing good money after bad? Your analysis must be ruthless. If there is anyone with business savvy in the world you trust, now is the time to seek them out, tell your story and listen.
Should you determine that the beast is worthless, both to you or anybody else, still do not give up. At least try to sell it.
cardinal rules and paid the price. I had not looked to see if the leopard could change its spots, and I had not instructed my managers at Dennis Publishing to quietly sound out the chances of selling Stuff.
Experience is only a name we give to our failures.
he thinks that whatever money the company has no use for belongs to him. But it doesn’t. Not unless it is paid as salary, or a bonus or as a dividend. This is the thing to keep in the forefront of your mind.
If your company can afford to pay you money, then that’s fine, as long as you declare that it has been paid and get ready to pay the tax on that payment. If you find other ways of moving the company’s money into your own pocket without reporting the movement or using a company asset for your personal life, you’re almost certainly milking the cow in a way that is not permitted. It’s that simple. And my advice is to keep it simple, and to hire competent tax advisors just as soon as you begin earning money over and above your salary.
Seeking substantial wealth is almost always a fool’s game. The statistics show that very few people ever succeed. Most of them should never have made the attempt in the first place. They aren’t suited to it, and if that sounds defeatist, then consider the fact that the search will take up a great deal of your waking life for many, many years.
And yet you wish to waste your youth in the getting of money? Really? Think hard, my young cub, think hard and think long before you embark on such a quest. The time spent attempting to acquire wealth will mount up and cannot be reclaimed, whether you succeed or whether you fail.
Even should you succeed in becoming rich, unlikely as that is, what will you have achieved? Independence of a kind? The luxury to choose what you wish to do with the rest of your life? Happiness? No, no and no. You will not achieve any of those things. Not when you have too much money.
The rich are not happy. I have yet to meet a single really rich happy man or woman—and I have met many rich people. The demands from others to share their wealth become so tiresome, and so insistent, they nearly always decide they must insulate themselves. Insulation breeds paranoia and arrogance. And loneliness. And rage that you have only so many years left to enjoy rolling in the sand you have piled up.
Am I happy? No. Or, at least, only occasionally, when I am walking in the woods alone, or deeply ensconced in composing a difficult piece of verse, or sitting quietly with old friends over a bottle of wine. Or feeding a stray cat. I could do all those things without wealth. So why do I not give it all away? Because I worked too hard for it. Because I am tainted by it. Because I am afraid to. All those reasons and more. Perhaps, if I am lucky enough to become old, I will accumulate something else: the courage to give it all away before I die. That would be a good thing, I think.
Château d’Yquem.
Wine
It’s possible to get rich from your bedroom while your mother is ironing your shirt or blouse downstairs, I suppose. But it’s unlikely.
No matter. As long as you have cut the parental knot, you are in good shape.
Fear of failure is a subject about which I have already written in this book, probably to excess. I repeat that it is the main stumbling block to getting rich for most people. You simply have to face up to it, stare it in the eye and cut loose from such thoughts.
am suggesting that you must cut loose, in your mind, from your previous life. Getting rich comes from an attitude of mind. It isn’t going to happen if things drift on pretty much the way they are right now.
Lastly, it goes without saying that you must cut loose from working for other people.
if you do not have a tiger handy, I suggest you acquire one quickly if you wish to amass serious wealth.
Look for new mountains where gold is being mined; or will be mined soon.
I would invent a new beer. I would print a number inside each bottle cap. I would set up a lottery, with the agreement of the government. There would be a draw once a month. Whoever produced the beer cap with the winning number would win a substantial cash prize. Fifty percent of the lottery money would go to the winner. Ten percent would go to the government. Forty percent would go to good causes—children in need, orphans, education, that kind of thing.
I would make television commercials where a bartender asks a good-looking Vincentian man if he wants another beer. “Sure,” he’ll reply. “I’ll have one for the widows and orphans.”
double bluff?)
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Property is always good.
One thing is for sure, you must avoid the trap of going into what you think will make you money if you have no empathy or feeling for what you are about to do. There’s no future in that.
Go for what attracts you. Go for something that exploits your natural talents.
You cannot banish fear, but you can face it down, stomp on it, crush it, bury it, padlock it into the deepest recesses of your heart and soul and leave it there to rot.
All that is stopping you is fear. I do not know of what kind. It may even be fear of succeeding. But if you want to be rich, gentle reader, and if you can read these words, then all that is stopping you is fear of one kind or another.
It is fear that rules us. Love and respect and other such emotions make it bearable, at a price. But fear rules us all, and always has.
Which is odd. Because what can there be for us to fear, when each of us knows we shall die eventually?
Commit or don’t commit. No half-measures. 2. Cut loose from all negative influences. 3. Choose the right mountain. 4. Fear nothing. 5. Start now. 6. Go!
Keep giving it away. The faster you give it away, the more money will flow back to you. Not because of “karma” or “universal cosmic forces,” but because you then spend less time defending it and more time making more of it.
No one has my e-mail address, because I refuse to register one. I never will. I am very hard to reach and that’s deliberate. Only a very few trusted aides, business associates and my lover can reach me day or night. And sometimes, not even then. If you do not begin to isolate yourself pronto when you get rich, then you will be driven mad pretty swiftly.
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