How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

Don’t do anything because you feel you have to. Go for what attracts you. Go for something that exploits your natural talents. Go to the mountain which produces money. Money that has your name on it.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. EDMUND BURKE, THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL

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.

Armies and governments fear men or women who know they are going to die soon; and they have good reason to. Such people have nothing to lose. They will commit any atrocity and take as many others with them as they can, if they are driven to it. You must now become that doomed man or woman. You are going to die. Nothing can alter the fact. It is immutable. Incomprehensible. Unfair. All those things. But it sets you free, don’t you see? It sets you free. What does anything matter if you are going to die? Nothing matters. Nothing at all. Get that through your terrified mind and you will wake up in the morning ready to rip the throat out of the first gazelle unfortunate enough to cross your path. Why would you rip its throat out? Because you can. Not for breakfast. Not for the ‘thrill of the chase’. But because you can.

Just try. Try for just a single day, a whole day when you refuse to acknowledge fear of failure, fear of making yourself look like an idiot, fear of losing your lover, fear of losing your job, fear of your boss, fear of anything and of any kind. Fear will creep back, usually at three in the morning. Laugh at it and tell it to take a hike. Smash it in the teeth. Spit on it. Put your arms round it and make nicey-nicey. Then slip a sharp blade into its stinking throat just as you’re French-kissing it. Go on. I dare you. If you can do it, this will transform your life. Not for the better. I didn’t promise you that. But you will instantly perceive (among many other things) just how much money there is in the world and how pitifully easy it is to obtain it. Money that already has your name on it.

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. You have no one to blame but yourself. The world is full of gazelles with diamonds in their guts. Look! There’s one over there, right now! Let’s go rip its throat out and take the diamond. Maybe there will be two diamonds. If there aren’t, then I’m keeping the first diamond, you understand? Otherwise I’ll rip your throat out, too. Come on! There’s nothing to fear. Let’s get rich! That is what getting rich is going to be like. You will become a predator. A killer. You will cease to be prey. You will not succumb to fear. Others will fear you. Especially gazelles bearing diamonds.

You have less time than you think. We all do. Why then are you waiting to fulfil your perfectly legitimate, if foolish, desire? If you do not start today, then when will you start? Tomorrow? Next year? The year after? You will never start unless you start NOW!

Commit yourself heart and soul, mind. Heart and soul. No half measures or lukewarm approach is likely to succeed in what William Butler Yeats called ‘this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world’. Your quest is mad. What use to muddy the waters with logic and statistics – bugaboos that will only serve to discourage you from taking the plunge? There is a place for impetuosity and leaps of faith. A place for belief. That place is here. And the time is now. You must take your first steps on the long, lonely road to wealth by beginning now, or you must hurl this book into the fire, or out the window, for all the good it will do you.

Need will drive you, but you must not prevaricate. You must act at the slightest hint of a chance to make money. You must go, go, go!

You may have many reasons for caution and proceeding carefully. There always are such reasons. They creep about a fearful mind like Tolkien’s Gollum, wearing spirit to a shadow and sapping optimism with dread. Cast them out, these ‘reasons’. They are nothing. They are sprites and fancies of your imagination that will vanish if you so much as say boo! to their lickspittle goose. If you wish to get rich, there are no reasons why you should not get rich. None at all. For they are not ‘reasons’; they are excuses. For the most part they are pitiful alibis, half truths and self-serving evasions you have erected to spare yourself from the quiet terror of taking your own financial life in your hands and making your dreams concrete reality. They are the children of fear and the parents of a thousand ‘if onlys’.

The only three valid reasons for not attempting to become rich are: ‘I do not wish to be rich.’ Or, ‘I wish to be rich but I have other priorities.’ Or, ‘I am too stupid to try to get rich.’

I happen to know a man, a relative of sorts, who has many of the character ingredients of an entrepreneur, and yet has remained poor all his life. He is a pain in the neck. For years I had to listen to his blowhard spouting about how many of his ideas would have changed the world, if only he had not had children and ‘responsibilities’. Finally, I went out and bought him a copy of a Louis Jordan CD and played it to him at full blast. Here’s one of the verses: I been hearin’ all about all your big ideas Since you started. What’s the hitch? You ain’t never made ten dollars yet, Yet you say you can balance the national debt, If you’re so smart, How come you ain’t rich?

THE UPSIDE-DOWN PYRAMID FOR GETTING RICH 1. 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!

I spent a hell of a lot of what I made on sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. The rest – as the footballer Georgie Best joked just before he died recently – I wasted. It’s the usual old story. But whores have to make a living and so do purveyors of French wine and single malt whisky. (To be serious for a moment, some of the smartest, nicest people I ever met in my life were whores. But only one of them, out of the hundreds I have known, ever got rich. A Saudi Prince picked her up in a nightclub. The rest is history. But she was one in a million. Whoring is a particularly dangerous and ineffective way of getting rich.)

Never loan it to friends. If you loan money to a friend, you will lose your friend as well as your money. Give them whatever you feel like giving. Then forget it. Ditto with relatives. If you diligently follow this one piece of advice, you will be saved a sackful of misery. Trust me. Broadcast your policy loudly. This will spare you from many embarrassing demands that will otherwise vex you.

Get ‘first flush’ barminess out of your system as fast as possible. You’re going to do it if you get rich. Yes, you are. You are going to buy a sodding great big house, then more houses abroad, then servants by any other name, then you are going to start misbehaving. Gambling. Credit-card abuse. Expensive clothes. Whores. Drugs. Drink. Fast cars. Private jets. Big parties. Interior designers. Gold taps. The lot. This probably can’t be avoided. But the sooner you can work through this ‘barmy’ phase, the better your health will stand up, and the sooner you will get your second wind.

Your oldest friends are your only friends. Sad. Very sad. But true. And not all those old friends will be comfortable with the new disparity in wealth between you and them. You’ll have to wait and see which. And, surprisingly, you will have to work on those friendships for quite a while. They’re important to you, believe me. Only your old, trusted mates can tell you when to get off. Will dare tell you that you’re out of order.

Get used to being ‘cut off’. I do not carry a mobile phone or any communications device on my person. At least, not one anyone knows anything about. No one has my email 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. At least that’s my experience. It isn’t that you have changed so much, (although believe me, you have), it is simply that you are now a loaded galleon, a supertanker, and all the pirates have lookouts. There just isn’t enough time in the world to deal with them all. Avoid them instead.

Avoid developing ‘plate-glass vision’. It’s true you want to be difficult to reach, but that doesn’t mean you should allow yourself to develop what Bob Dylan called ‘plate-glass vision’. No need for that. I often eat at the same small restaurants I always did in London and New York. They know I’ve done well, but the staff there have no idea how well. I drop by my companies without notice and chew the fat with employees and managers regularly. I invite many of them to visit me at my private office, one on one. Even with my poetry, I go on the road on long tours and let the audience tell me what they think, face to face. In Mustique, I often invite yachtie strangers I’ve met at the local bar up for a shower and a drink or a meal – to their astonishment, usually. ‘Plate-glass vision’ won’t make you poor, but it will drive you crazy.

Get your own private advisors. The professionals who help run your company must be first class. The professionals who run your private wealth for you must be even classier. There is no substitute for a first-class lawyer, tax advisor, accountant, auditor, estate manager and business advisor. None. You will get into a ton of trouble if you don’t search them out, appoint them, and make your peace with them at the earliest opportunity. Avoid the errors I made in my first few years of being rich. Do this earlier than you think is necessary. You’ll understand why later.

Do not try to be friends with your staff. When you are worth several hundred or a thousand times what a member of your staff is worth financially (do the math), then trying to be friends with them or encouraging them to be friends with you is silly. They know it’s phony and you know it’s phony, and they know that you know. Not being friends comes with the territory. Being fair and friendly is always cool. Trying to be ‘one of the boys’ is pathetic.

Choose personal aides with enormous care. You may spend more time with your PA, your chauffeur or your business manager than with your husband, wife or lover. Or even, sadly, than with your children. If a personal aide is not working out, then fire him or her just as soon as you know. But be very generous when you do so. Tell them it’s your fault – it probably is. Close aides like these can become your friends, and usually do, over time. That’s understandable. But try to keep a little distance ‘just in case’. Ensure they are employed under a very different contract than employees of your company. They must work for you, not your company.

Never stop looking for talent and promoting talent. This single suggestion will keep anyone rich. Talent is all most companies consist of. Talented people are crucial to keeping your company humming right along and growing. As the owner, you have the right to seek out talent, both inside and outside of your company. You have the right to insist it is promoted or hired. Make use of that last right. If you get known for making use of it, the talent will start coming to you.

Lead. Do not be led. You have employed a bunch of talented boys and girls who are smarter than you. Great. But you are their leader. If you sniff an opportunity, then get them to consider it. If they prevaricate, call a meeting and brainstorm. If they still won’t get excited, then take the project into your private office or somewhere else and begin it there. Do not leave the opportunity within the company to be sabotaged, focus-grouped and committeed to death – which is almost certainly what will happen to it. Your employees and advisors are just that: employees and advisors. You are the owner. You must follow your instincts. You must lead.

If you’re bored with a business, sell it. You will not be able to disguise your lack of passion for a business if you fall out of love with it. Your lack of enthusiasm leaks out of you and infects those around you. They can sense it and they will find it hard to forgive and easy to emulate. Sell that particular business pronto. Then go and invest in something that doesn’t bore you.

Try to sell before you have to. You’re an entrepreneur. Your companies are not your ‘babies’, they are tools for acquiring wealth. Try to sell them before they peak. Buyers require what is called ‘blue sky’ (further growth) to get excited and offer a great price. I’m bad at this, sometimes. Fortunately, my American partners, Peter and Bob, are good at it. And, usually, they are right.

Remember you are only richer than them. Not smarter than them. If you do not employ a great many people smarter than you in your company, you are either Albert Einstein reincarnated or a fool. Making money doesn’t mean you are smart. Having a posh car, a fancy office and wearing a $5,000 suit doesn’t make you smart. Being surrounded by technology, research and cool gadgets does not make you smart. Living in a big house does not make you smart. It makes you rich. The sun does not shine out of your backside. You are not infallible. You are neither the Pope nor Albert Einstein.

It’s your call. Believe in your own bullshit and grow steadily poorer, or listen to the people you employ and get richer and richer. I tried it the first way in the early days. When that didn’t work, I got sensible and started a policy of deliberately employing men and women who were smarter than I was – and listening to them. It works every time.

Fear not. For fear itself is fed by fear, And all fears pass. Did no one tell you so? Come take my hand, my friend, and we will peer Into this fear’s abyss. And jump! And know.

THE EIGHT SECRETS TO GETTING RICH Analyse your need. Desire is insufficient. Compulsion is mandatory. Cut loose from negative influences. Never give in. Stay the course. Ignore ‘great ideas’. Concentrate on great execution. Focus. Keep your eye on the ball marked ‘The Money Is Here’. Hire talent smarter than you. Delegate. Share the annual pie. Ownership is the real ‘secret’. Hold on to every percentage point you can. Sell before you need to, or when bored. Empty your mind when negotiating. Fear nothing and no one. Get rich. Remember to give it all away.

The first step? Just do it And bluff your way through it.