How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

People who grow rich almost always improve their sex life. More people want to have sex with them. That’s just the way human beings work.

‘If you can actually count your money, you are not really a rich man.’

Few inventors or ‘creative types’ make very good managers or businessmen, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an over-priced pair of plimsolls. Specially adapted plimsolls may be a good idea. But the goal is still to win, and sports shoes don’t win. Athletes do.

Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

‘Assumption is the mother of all f***-ups’.

It is an ‘anti-self-improvement’ book – because it admits openly that the chances of anyone reading it and then becoming rich are minuscule. The vast majority of you are far too nice. And comfortable. And sensible.

‘If only …’ are the two saddest words in the English language.

determined never to be sent back to prison and never to report to another human being in his life.

and few fortunes are made in mature industries, unless you are lucky enough to create a monopoly in one.

If you are young and reading this then I ask you to remember just this: you are richer than anyone older than you, and far richer than those who are much older.

Cutting loose can be painful. I have heard of very few men or women who made a ton of money who did not leave, or divorce, their wives or husbands or lovers sooner or later. Or who were not estranged from family members, often their children. It comes with the territory. Even if you hand over large sums as a gift to those you had to cut loose from to get it, they will never really forgive you. It isn’t the money, you see. It is because you have humiliated them, in their minds anyway, both by succeeding and by valuing the time it took for you to succeed over their part in your life.

Fear nothing. Another easy-to-say and impossible piece of advice. Tough luck, chum. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Get used to it. It isn’t going to change any time soon.

Drugs can be great, for a while, as I am forced to admit to my godchildren. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or ignorant. But they will very often kill you and wreck your life. That is the problem. And, while they do it, they stop you from getting rich. Better to forget about drugs and move on.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with orgies, parties, narcotics and booze – but they will kill you in the end. If I had spent the thousands of nights writing poetry that I spent playing the fool to keep boredom at bay, I would be a happier, healthier man today.