How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

So I invested heavily in The Week. It lost money. What did you expect? Ian Leggett was desperately concerned that I had bitten off more than I could chew. He had a right to be concerned. I asked some talented people to help out from Dennis Publishing, careful myself not to interfere with the creation of the editorial product. They already had that right. It did not need messing with. The Week promptly lost more money, so I bought out all of the minority investors, except for Jolyon Connell, the founder, and the editor, Jeremy O’Grady. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, The Week began to take off. I remember the thrill one evening when I heard a person I did not know at a dinner party quote straight out of my magazine. Even more unbelievably, readers began to proselytise. No, I mean it. Not just express satisfaction, but proselytise like religious fundamentalists. Like true believers. In thirty years of publishing, I had never seen anything like it. Strangers would buttonhole me at gatherings and tell me how many subscriptions to The Week they were responsible for amongst their friends. Then they would demand that I did not change a thing in the magazine. I was to leave the editorial alone, did I hear? I heard. I never had any intention of messing with it, although I did ask Jolyon and Jeremy to introduce obituaries and the weather into its pages, which they did. Imagine that: a magazine which reports on last week’s weather! I met famous people, I mean really famous people: prim...

You can guess the result. The Week is now the most profitable magazine I own in the UK. Pound for pound (revenues divided by cost), it is the most profitable magazine I have ever owned.

Its margin is terrific. Today, it has more paid subscribers in Britain than one of the most venerable magazines in the world, The Economist. The Week has launched in the USA and is busy becoming a huge success there, as well, under its editor-in-chief, William Falk, though it cost me $50 million to get it to break even. Justin Smith, its general manager, approached a legend in the newspaper business, Sir Harold Evans, who swiftly pe...

Trust your instincts. Do not be a slave to them, but when your instincts are screaming, Go! Go! Go! then it’s time for you to decide whet...

You cannot do this in a deliberate, considered manner. You can’t get rich painting by numbers. You can only do it by becoming a predator, by waiting patiently, by remaining alert and constantly sniffing the air and by bringing massive, murderous force to bear upon your prey when you pounce. You can share the kill later, by all means. But if you want to get rich, trust your own judgement when it calls – and leave those whose job it is...

MAKE MORE BASKETS: D...

Eggs being what they are and the world being what it is, they will sometimes break. No matter how good your idea, how fierce your resolve and how lucky you are in the early days, you must prepare for that eventuality. It will come. It always comes.

As you will discover when you start your own business, it’s difficult and scary facing up to swiftly changing realities on the ground. Most of us would prefer that things stayed the same so that we can carry on making money in ways we have grown comfortable with. But things do not stay the same. Either you learn to go with the flow and change as rapidly as you are able, or you will be left stranded, like the last dinosaur, by the last warm lake, on the last continent the ice age has yet to reach.

Just remember that this advice is not designed for your start-up phase. During the start-up, you concentrate on that one basket as if your life (and the life of your first-born) depends upon it. But once you have something that’s working and making some money, start looking around quickly for another opportunity. The more baskets the better. Diversifying not only ensured that I had more chances to lay more eggs and somewhere to incubate them, it also gave me the confidence to concentrate on any one egg at any one time. When one of my projects was in trouble and needed more work, or needed rethinking, the fact that I had other eggs in other baskets gave me the confidence to do what was right. Like re-engineering or folding it. One of the problems with being a start-up entrepreneur is that you tend to think of what you have created as some kind of surrogate child. It becomes your ‘baby’, if you’re not careful. This is dangerous and counter-productive. You are not in the egg-laying and basket-weaving or baby business. You are in the business of getting rich.