How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

Richard has perfected one cardinal rule: he owns or part-owns more baskets than almost anyone alive. It’s certainly one way to become a billionaire.

Listening is the most powerful weapon after self-belief and persistence you can bring into play as an entrepreneur.

If you have experience, a little investment cash and will make the time, then the world will bring to your door an amazing collection of visionaries, con artists, madmen and budding entrepreneurs.

Americans worship courtesy almost as much as they worship money.

But the courtesy of listening is not an excuse for inaction. Unfortunately, this is often the very use to which it is put. How

Ideas, by the way, cannot be ‘owned’ by anyone. You cannot trademark or patent or copyright any idea. You can only protect the execution of the idea and trademark the name.

How many times can one person ‘dust themselves down, pick themselves up and start all over again’ before they lose heart?

‘If you’re going through hell, keep going’.

The only truth about luck, good or bad, is that it will change. The law of averages virtually guarantees it.

This ‘flight not fight’ behavioural trait is the sign of a prey animal, not a predator.

Despite what you will read in many self-improvement

tomes, ‘partnering’ and ‘symbiotic evolution’ are no way to get rich. They may be a way to a better world. They may make you a happier person and a better manager. But they will...

place himself in the way of luck. He does not draw luck to him. He does not make his own luck. He is much too much in love with the

But there is a downside to all this intelligence and imagination. He thinks a little too much before

he acts. He weighs the options too carefully. He is capable of imagining defeat.

So while he is clever enough to want to minimise his risk by switching to yet another new and uncontested marketplace, he leads himself into uncertainty. And into error.

Very few visionaries get rich, begging the lads at Google’s pardon.

‘The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.’

‘Fortune favours the brave,’ says the old proverb. And that’s right enough. But it seems to especially scorn anyone who wants money too badly. And it positively appears to despise men or women who fear to lose what fortune they already have.

In modern, sexist parlance: ‘Treat her mean to keep her keen.’ Pimp her, don’t court her. And don’t go looking for her or make enquiries about her. It isn’t exactly the act of a gentleman, but then you didn’t ask me to teach you to be a gentleman.

Prepare yourself for luck, but don’t seek her out. Let her come to you.

Make your own luck.

Don’t whine or ever describe yourself as ‘unlucky’. (You’re alive, aren’t you?)

Be bold. Be brave. Don’t thank your lucky stars. The stars can’t hear you.

Don’t try to do it all yourself. Delegate and teach others to delegate.

If being a hero isn’t your style, then fake it. Reality will catch up eventually.

Just do it. It is much easier to apologise than to obtain permission.

Never take the quest for wealth seriously. It’s just a game, chum.

Please remember: you are not reading this book to become a successful manager. Managers rarely become rich. Most managers are lieutenants. You, on the other hand, have to keep your eye on another ball – several other balls, in fact.

the world is full of aspiring lieutenants. Most people seek job security, job satisfaction and power over others far more than they seek wealth.

Management efficiency really does count, of course: loyalty counts, fairness counts, a steady disposition counts, a sense of appropriate compromise counts. An organisation will fail without managers who apply such virtues consistently.

But they are not necessarily attributes you should invite

into the room during a series of tough negotiations when the big money is on the table and your future is on the line. They are the attributes o...

Serious negotiations are very different from day-to-day bargaining and should be approached differently. They imply a weakness in the position of at least one of the parties involved in the negotiations,

The first thing to be done, perhaps the most vital thing, is to establish exactly where those weaknesses lie.

It is for this reason that small companies and individuals have sometimes managed to out-negotiate larger rivals, especially in emerging markets and technologies.

The balance of weakness is also the reason why farmers in Britain, for example, are utterly in thrall to the power of the supermarket chains and why British people pay more for much of their food than almost anywhere else in Europe. British

Farmers are poor negotiators. Supermarket chains are great negotiators. Supermarkets have a lot of cash and many possible sources of supply. Farmers need to fix that broken tractor and pay their veterinary bills right now.

Its finances are precarious. Its owner is a greedy little flea, determined never to be sent back to prison and never to report to another human being in his life.

The flea has hardened his heart and has walked away when the price was not met.

The flea has weighed Greed vs. Need. He believes Need will outweigh Greed.

But do not surrender control of the negotiations or the agenda to such professionals. They are not the ones who will have to live with the consequences –

you are. Professional advisors are there to explain and advise, not to decide.

‘Never break a covenant, whether you make it with a false man or a just man of good conscience. The covenant holds for both, the false and the just alike.’

Bacon ‘negotiated’ his way from relative poverty to the very pinnacle of wealth and power in England under King James I. Then lost it all, and spent his last years writing and studying. His Essays are among the wisest, most thought-provoking (and meanest) set of instructions ever published in English.

If you do not own the company, or a part of it, then it is possible you are only a senior manager because you like power.

that is the case, then you might be understandably reluctant to delegate real power or opportunity, in case the person you delegate to proceeds to excel. This, in turn, may well

It’s pitiful and a little sad, but we have all seen it. We saw it in school. We saw it in the playground. We saw it in college. And we saw it in our first job.

Such bullies and toads appear to cover the earth. They often gravitate towards jobs that give the appearance of power but which require low(ish) skill levels – security

the prison service, immigration