How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

Your parents, likely as not, will be of little use here. Their love for you may well blind them to the harsher realities of your true abilities and potential. There are a great many doctors and lawyers who apprenticed themselves to their profession solely to please an ambitious parent – only later to regret their acquiescence at leisure. If you do decide to ask for advice concerning your true aptitudes, then preparation shows you are serious and will be more likely to effect a serious response. As a godparent, I am always willing to discuss the matter, but only if my godchild has prepared a list of questions and suggestions, and only in private. Casual conversations around a family living room, with others sticking their oar in or trying to show off with banter and smart remarks, are tedious and counter-productive. For ambitious young people this is a serious matter and deserves to be taken seriously. Of course, such discussions cannot make you rich. But they can really help in the Search. They can build confidence, a key element in risk taking, and the only way I know of to get rich from a standing start. And they can inform you, too, of your weaknesses, which in turn can protect you from spending your working life making other people rich – the probable fate of nearly everyone you currently know.