How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘This thing is really an uncut sixteen-page signature from a normal magazine and yet you charge the price of a whole magazines to the reader.’ ‘You’ve got it,’ I replied. ‘You can charge that kind of money,’ I went on breathlessly, ‘because when they finish reading it, kids can hang it on the wall as a cheap poster.’ Peter looked up at me and smiled. ‘I’ll try it. I have to try it. What can we lose?’ Peter and Robert are still my American partners thirty years later. KFM was a success in America. And one magazine led to another. Over the years, Peter, Bob and I have risked hundreds of millions of dollars together. We have created jobs for thousands of Americans. We have become rich.

Thinking big. That’s the secret. Of the dozens of independent magazine publishers in Britain back in the 1970s, hardly one of them dared to think big enough to get on an aeroplane and hawk their wares in the biggest market in the world. Those few that did so, licensed their magazines in America. They never thought to create a partnership and risk their own capital. Not even the largest British magazine publishers, conglomerates like IPC thought to risk it. Perhaps they had too much to lose?

But the corollary of thinking big is to act small. Just because you have a success or two under your belt...

‘Success is never permanent; failure is never fatal. The only thing that really counts is to never, never, never give up.’ That’s that old windbag Winston Churchi...

Once you begin to believe that you are infallible, that success will automatically lead to more success, and that you have ‘got it made’, reality will be sure to give you a rude wake-up call. Believing your own bullshit is always a perilous activi...

By acting small, I mean remaining in touch. Remaining flexible. Constantly examining how your company could do better. Keeping a sense of proportion and humility. Not throwing your weight around playing the great ‘I Am’. Remembering t...

Acting small in the early days of your business sets an example to those around you. If staff see you indulging in long lunch hours and purchasing yourself a fancy company car, then they are either going to resent it or they are going to emulate you. This is not a good thing. You can do all that stuff later, when you’ve made your first fifty million. Most of the worst errors I have made in my life came from forgetting to act small. It’s hard to do when you’re rolling around in coin and everything is going your way. But acting big leads to complacency, and complacency is the reason that many successful start-ups falter. Every day you have to hit the ground running, putting in more hours than even your most dedicated member of staff. You have to stay flexible. You have to be willing to l...

I know all this because in the late 1980s and early 1990s I forgot to remember to act small. I spent millions of dollars on drinking, taking drugs and running around with whores. I lost all respect for money and for the blood, swea...

In a single decade I got through more than a hundred million dollars living high on the hog. At one time, there were no less than fourteen ‘mistresses’ depending on a regular stipend from my personal bank account. A single evening’s entertainment could come to thirty or forty thousand in the Big Apple, London or...

Even though I was not so foolish as to use company money for this idiocy, my business still suffered and my health suffered. Some good people I trusted stopped working with me. It was absolutely the stupidest thing I have ever done. And it very nearly killed me. Eventually, I was hospitalised. When the doctors there heard how much cocaine and booze I had been imbibing over the past few years, they went ballistic. In brutal words of one syllable at a time, they warned me that either I was through with drugs and booze or they were through with me. One of them, a young doctor with a stutter, summed it all up: ‘M-M-Mr Dennis, you are ac-ac-acting as if you ha-ha-have a one-way ticket to ga-ga-gaol or the mo-mor-morgue. Wh-wh-which do you wa-wa-want it to be?’ He’d got that right. Acting big. Eventually I wised up and began to straighten out my life. I escaped by the skin of my teeth from the consequences of acting big. Almost as if by magic, the business began to make progress again. I hurled myself back into the fray, gave up all narcotics (probably the hardest thing I have ever done), stuck to wine as far as...

Think big, act small. It’s a recipe that never goes out of style. While especially important for start-ups, it will serve you faithfully long after you have established yourself as a serious player. A successful and naturally modest entrepreneur is an object of reverence and respect in ...

THE FIFTH ERROR: SKIMPING ON TALENT If you are determined to be rich, there is only one talent you require. Can you think what it is before your eyes skim down to the next paragraph? Right. You need the talent to identify, hire and nurture others with talent. ‘There is no substitute for talent.

Talent is the key to sustained growth, and growth is the key to early wealth. You have to identify and hire talent. You can’t skimp on it.

Sometimes, to ensure that a talented individual will work for you, or will stay working with you, you need to be flexible. Money is not always the great motivator here. Talented people want a good salary, of course, but surprisingly often they are more attracted to new opportunities and challenges.

What could I offer Stephen Colvin to ensure that I preserved his talent from being poached? I asked Stephen to fly and meet me at my lakeside cottage in Connecticut. He wasn’t too keen on the idea. He knew perfectly well that I was going to try to ‘turn’ him. And he knew, too, that I did not have a Dennis operation in the States that would interest him. Nevertheless he came. When Stephen arrived, I took him down to the dock and we boarded my boat. A few beers and a high-speed ride later, I cut the engine and we sat looking at each other while the boat bobbed gently on the surface of Candlewood lake. I was careful not to break the delicious silence. Finally, Stephen spoke: ‘Felix, I’m not going to stay at Dennis. It’s a great company but I want to move on and Pippa and I want to come to America.’ I nodded. And I swear to God, it was only at that moment that I realised what I might be able to do. ‘What is the position they’re offering you?’ ‘Vice president,’ he replied. ‘How would you like to be president of an American company?’ ‘What company?’ ‘Dennis Publishing, Inc.’ ‘There is no Dennis Publishing, Inc, Felix. Just Blender and a few bits and bobs.’ ‘Ah, but there will be a Dennis Publishing, Inc, Stephen. And soon.’ ‘What is it going to publish?’ ‘What would you like it to publish, Stephen? You’re the bloody president!’ He couldn’t refuse. This was the chance he had always wanted. I was going to keep my talent and Stephen was going to come to America. As a last added bon...

When you come across real talent, it is sometimes worth allowing them to create the structure in which they choose to labour. In nine cases out of ten, by inviting them to take responsibility and control for a new venture, you will motivate them to do great things.

Talent is usually conscious of its own value. But the currency of that value is not necessarily a million-dollar salary. The opportunity to prove themselves, and sometimes the chance to run the show on a day-to-day basis, will often do the trick just as well.

This holds true even if talent is placed in the driver’s seat of a small division within an existing operation. What talent seeks, as often as not, is the chance to prove itself and the opportunity to excel.

You must identify talent. Then you must move heaven and earth to hire it. You must nurture it, reward it properly and protect it from being poached. If necessary, dream up a new project. Better still, get the talent to dream it up.

Youth is a further factor. By the time talent is in its mid-to-late forties or early fifties, it will have become very, very expensive. Young talent can be found and underpaid for a short while, providing the work is challenging enough. Then it will be paid at the market rate. Finally, it will reach a stage where it is being paid based on past reputation alone. That is when you must part company with it.

The French impressionist Degas once said: ‘Everybody has talent at twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.’ True enough. Most talent does not survive undiminished through its middle forties, although...

Anybody wishing to become rich cannot do so without talent. Either their own, or far more likely, on the back of the talent of others. Talent is indispensable, although it is always replaceable. Just remember the simple rules concerning talent: identify it, hire it...

I do not believe anyone can be ‘improved’ by buying and reading a book. They can only be ‘improved’, if that is the word, by their own actions.

If anything, How to Get Rich is something ever-so-slightly new in the world, or at least I have tried to make it so. 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 comforta...

My book points out, in harsh detail, the damage to your present contentment and the risk to future and existing relationships that you run by seeking to get rich. It also deals with the coarsening of your nature that will accompany the rough...

It points out, too, that avarice is tremendously time-consuming and that time is in somewhat short supply...

To return to our subject, persistence is important, no doubt about it, and requires a concerted effort of will and stamina to main...

Stubbornness is not persistence. Stubbornness implies you intend to persist despite plentiful evidence that you should not. A stubborn person fears to be shown he or she is wrong. A persistent person is convinced that he or she has been right all along, and that the proof lies just around the corner.

But never give in easily. If you can, attempt one step further along the road than appears sensible before giving in.

So-called ‘persistence’ is a vital attribute for those who wish to become rich, or who wish to achieve anything worthwhile for that matter. As is the ability to acknowledge that one has made a mistake and that a new plan of action must now be made. Any such acknowledgement is not a weakness, it is a sign of clear thinking. In its way, it is a kind of persistence in itself. Try, try, try again, does not mean doing what has already failed, over and over again. Quitting is not dishonourable. Quitting when you believe you can still succeed is. You must keep the faith. Belief in yourself and faith in your project can move mountains. But not if you insist on trying to scale the mountain by an impossible route which has already failed.

Do not be afraid to change tack, alter course or make new plans with whatever you are attempting to achieve. Especially if you sense that you are on the wrong track.

SELF-BELIEF No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

This is the core of it. Persistence is not quite as important as self-belief. I have known people who believed in themselves, who acted on that belief, got lucky quickly and got rich. Persistence merely offers a second or third bite at the cherry. Your belief in yourself brought you to the cherry bowl in the first place.

Self-belief is a priceless asset. We may detest arrogance, yet isn’t it true that we admire it a little, too? Even though arrogance is a poor, shabby thing compared with rooted s...

Why do we covertly admire such attributes? Because such people often have what the ancients called ‘the look of eagles’ about them, which has little to do with their appearance. Single-handedly, individuals with ingrained self-belief (and, usu...

We have had one such in the past century in England. Perhaps he was a warmonger. Perhaps he was an incompetent strategist and a jingoist and an empire builder and a silly old buffoon, especially about the rights of women. But Winston Churchill’s sense of his own destiny – his unshakeable self-beli...

Within the British Cabinet and the British aristocracy there lay a hidden yearning for peace. Even an admiration for Fascism as a bulwark against the Communist hordes. Peace at any price. Peace to save the world that had supported and enriched Britain’s aristocrats for countless generations. Peace, even though they knew full well what Hitler had already done in those countries now swarming with what Churchill described as ‘the odious apparatus of the Gestapo’. His Cabinet colleague, Lord Halifax, would have made peace with Nazi Germany in an instant. As would Neville Chamberlain, the previous prime minister, known as ‘the apostle of appeasement’. And if we had made peace, which would have meant disarming ourselves and handing over our air force and, perhaps, our navy to the Nazis, where would Europe be now? And what language would we all be speaking? What would our beliefs be? Which gods would we worship? How many millions upon millions of those among us would have ‘disappeared’? And how many would never have been born?

Ignore his politics, and even his principles, by all means. But to read Winston Churchill’s speeches today, and, better still, to hear his recordings of them, is to understand the astonishing power and mesmeric quality of self-belief. Younger men and women may mock all they wish but the iron determination and self-belief of this one old man, this old man with a BBC microphone, meant more to Britain at that moment than all the kings and queens in her long history. For just one moment, a democratic people were saved from fear of failure, and from the fear of fear itself; from the shame of capitulation to evil – by what? By one old man’s belief in his own destiny, by his insane, unprincipled self-belief, and the belief in the destiny of his country and of freedom in Western Europe.

I am not asking you to be Winston Churchill. None of us could be, or would necessarily want to be. He was a child of his time. But I do ask that you begin, right now, right at this very mome...

Without self-belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.

Doubts are like pain. If pain was to be eliminated from humankind, how would we receive warning that something was happening to our body requiring urgent attention?

There is nothing wrong with doubt, or with fear. They are immensely useful tools. But you either learn to incorporate them into your thinking and your life, or you will be ruled by them. There is no ‘middle way’.

It is doubt multiplied by the fear of failure, unconfronted, which leads to the creation of a vicious cycle where self-belief is eroded and nothing is achieved. Doubts can and should be confronted, as should fear. This is best done in daylight, under rigorous examination. (Three o’clock in the morning is a difficult time to confront any such messengers.) Write down your doubts and fears. Examine them. Hold them up to the light. Suck the wisdom out of them and discard their husks in the trash.

Are there things that can be done to bolster self-belief? I believe there are, but they are mostly beyond the remit of this little book. This book deals only with the getting of wealth....

Firstly, if you have ever escaped from very serious trouble indeed, or have been at the point of death, then you will know that one of two things happens. Either you become cautious to an absurd degree, or you are liberated from many ordinary fears. With liberation comes the knowledge that nothing is really very important in the lives of men; nothing is as terrifying as the ...

Secondly, you should remember that you are unique. Any scientist will tell you so. No other human was ever born, or will ever be born, with the same combination of upbringing, flaws and qualities tha...

This business of piling up wealth is an easy business. Easy, that is, compared with giving birth, or raising children, or pressing on a parent’s doorbell at midnight to tell them their child has died in an accident. Or nursing children you know will never grow to adulthood, or pulling rocks on rollers under the lash of brutal overseers to build a monument to a deranged pharaoh. How easy do they sound? If you will only believe that you can do it and give it your best shot, then whether or not you succeed, you will perhaps dislodge a pebble that will ricochet down the very small mountain of your life, creating an avalanche that other fools will stand in awe of. You will not find me among them clapping, but you will certainly find enough applause to repay you for the effort. You may even grow to enjoy the process. If you want to be rich you must work for it. But you must believe in it, too. You must believe in yourself, if only to armour yourself against the laughter of the gods in your quest. Your mad quest to be rich.

Several large publishers have since implied that they would have invested if I had not. My answer to that is: why didn’t they, then? After all, as Jolyon was the first to point out, he had never heard of me, or Dennis Publishing. The truth is that nobody else offered to invest big money in The Week because nobody else believed it could ever work financially. Not as a major title, anyway. My board of directors at Dennis Publishing certainly didn’t. They were dead against my investing in such a weekly. Weeklies eat up cash, especially weeklies with debts, no advertising, a pitiful number of subscribers, no newsstand sales and a bundle of small investors. Voices were raised in that boardroom. Loud voices. What I hadn’t the courage to tell my fellow directors at that meeting, or, for a day or two, even my financial guru, Ian Leggett, was that I had already invested. I loved the concept. I was going to own a piece of The Week. And to hell with naysayers. That’s easy to say. But it’s not good business. It’s rude and arrogant to invest in a company you intend to bring into your stable without a thorough and honest discussion of the pros and cons with senior colleagues. Like I said, it’s not good business. But it is the only business an entrepreneur has any right to be doing. I am not a manager. I am not even a businessman. I’m an entrepreneur and I go with my gut. After that, managers and bean-counters and financial advisors take over. But only afterwards.

I had the money and I had the ‘feeling’. The ‘feeling’ is when the hair rises slightly on the back of your arms and neck and you know you are on the scent of something you shouldn’t be doing – but you’re going to do anyway. It’s called commercial instinct. You develop it over the years. You certainly aren’t born with it. I had it with The Week.