Founders - #129 Felix Dennis (How to Get Rich)

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

What I learned from reading How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets by Felix Dennis.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[0:01] How Felix started his first business with no money. [4:30] Human nature does not change. We are cooperative animals. Those who wish to start a company cannot expect a free ride, but they might be surprised at the number of people willing to help them to some degree or another. [5:11] This book was one of the most requested books for me to cover on the podcast. I was hesitant to read it because of the title. After reading it I think a better title would be How I Got Rich. [7:36] A large part of this book is philosophical. He is asking us, “Is this really what you want?” He opens up about his drug addiction. About his addiction to prostitutes. About how he blew 100 million dollars and almost died. [8:13] How To Get Rich sets to tell you about how I did it. How I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital. It will expose the many errors I made along the way, which will contribute greatly to the length. [10:51] My constant refrain when I was bumming rides from friends as a teenager was, “You don’t understand. I was born to be driven.” [13:00] The key, I think, is confidence and an unshakeable belief that it can be done and that you are the one to do it. Tunnel vision helps. Being a bit of a shit helps. A thick skin helps. [16:01] Nearly all the great fortunes acquired by entrepreneurs arose because they had nothing to lose. Nobody had bothered to tell them that such a thing could not be done or would be likely to fail. Or if they had told them then they weren’t listening. They were too busy proving those around them wrong. [17:24] On trusting your instincts: The first few million dollars I ever made was the direct result of trusting my instincts— which were entirely at odds with conventional wisdom. I published a series of 8 full-page folded posters with articles printed on the back and charged the same price as magazines with 10 times the number of pages. I sold millions of copies around the world. Those magazines have earned me tens of millions of dollars in the last 25 years and are still earning me money today. [19:50] If you could turn the clock back for me by 40 years I would willingly give you every penny and every possession I own in return. And I would have the better of the bargain. [20:28] If I had my time again—knowing what I know today—I would dedicate myself to making just enough money to live comfortably. [21:00] Making money was, and still is, fun. But at one time is wrecked chaos upon my private life. It consumed my waking hours. [23:26] Think of fear—not as the King Kong of bogeymen—but as a mare. A mare, after all, is a horse. A horse can be tamed, bridled, saddled, harnessed, and eventually ridden. Harnessing the power of such a creature adds mightily to your own. Thus the nightmare of prospective failure provides you with the very opportunity you are seeking. [26:16] There is a lot of money and opportunity in unglamorous industries: One of the richest self-made men I know digs a hole in the ground to dispose of household waste. That's not how his company describes itself in its annual report, but essentially that’s what it does, along with building incineration plants. Glamorous? No. But in a good year, he earns $20 to $30 million. That's a sensational result for a small, wholly owned private company. [28:30] Advice John Lennon gave to Felix Dennis: “It won’t do, man. It’s not that you can’t sing. Sure you can do a fair imitation of Chuck Berry, but people don’t pay for imitations. You gotta find your own voice or stick to editing your magazines.” [32:26] One of Felix’s lowest moments: The electricity had been turned off in my flat weeks ago. So had the gas. I couldn’t afford to pay the bill. I sat by an open fire, feeding broken furniture I had scavenged from the trash into my living room fireplace. [33:00] If you happen to read biographies, as I do (scores of them every year), you will find a thread that runs through almost any story of success against the odds: They don’t give in. [34:08] It is my hope that this book will cause you to consider very carefully whether you are truly driven by inner demons to be rich. [35:06] This is how I interpret this book. He is writing to an earlier version of himself. [40:24] Felix winds up in the hospital. The doctors tell him if you don’t get off the drugs, and the alcohol, and the nightlife, you are going to die. [40:44] How Felix describes the person he was in the 80s and 90s: It is especially lethal to a coked up, overweight, cigarette smoking, malt whiskey swilling idiot with too much money who believe they are built of titanium. [41:10] On Winston Churchill and the importance of self belief: The iron determination and self belief of this one old man meant more to Britain at that moment than all the other Kings and Queens and her long history.[44:02] But I do ask that you begin, right now, right at this very moment, to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly. Do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and worse still, if you believe you never can believe, then by all means go on reading this book. But take it from me, your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Without self-belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible. [45:35] I may well have been able to put a few hundred million in the bank because I recognized that this getting rich malarkey is just a game. A delusion, if you will. [48:19] Ownership is not the most important thing. It is the only thing that counts. [54:17] The most important part of the book. I won’t take notes on it. You just have to read it or listen to me read it. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast. ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

In 1972, I persuaded a jolly young lawyer I had met to do an act for me. I had no money to pay him, but perhaps my chutzpah amused him. He helped me to register my £100 limited liability company and provided me with at least a fig leaf of respectability. I think I paid him £20 for his services. The company was called H. Bunch Associates, and I intended to publish a series of comic books. Next, I persuaded a close friend, Dick, to join me as co-director and production

manager. There wasn't much in the way of a salary. We liberated, meaning stole, a few sticks of office furniture, two electric typewriters, and a floor camera from the offices of Oz Magazine, where Dick and I had met. Another friend, Lemmy, from the metal band Motorhead, mentioned that an acquaintance of his was vacating a Garrett in the West End. Perhaps we could move in there. Lemmy used to occasionally sleep under the Oz design table while recovering from excessive ingestion of alcohol and other substances. Lemmy was right about the empty flat. Three rooms at the top of the most rickety stairs I had ever climbed. The building had been badly damaged in the blitz and never properly rebuilt. The last tenants had been breeding puppies in there. It took a long time to get rid of the stink of puppy shit.

Next, a close friend designed some smart-headed notepaper for us free of charge, suspecting, rightly, that we might be able to provide him with work if our venture succeeded. A small printer I'd come to know while working for Oz Magazine agreed to print this notepaper, knowing full well I could not pay him for it right then. A semi-friendly amused bank manager at Barclays Bank opened an account for the company, into which I deposited the mighty sum of 50 pounds. A magazine distributor, with whom Oz had done business, agreed to distribute my product, although I had nothing to show them. Somehow, I had to persuade a printer to provide machine time and paper to produce the comic we were busy preparing in the garret.

The bill would come to a few thousand pounds. I had written a great many record reviews when I worked for Oz. The record companies would send albums directly to my flat in the hope of soliciting a review, and they never asked for the LPs back. I sorted out all the albums I could bear to part with and sold them to a local record shop. This brought in just sufficient funds to at least get a few printers to talk with me while Dick and I lived on 10 pounds a week. But unless I could guarantee that the printers got paid, not one of them, very sensibly, would budge. Then I had an idea. I asked the owners of my potential distributors for the comic to write to a particular

printer, promising that he would be the first to receive money when the comic came out. They made it sound, as a matter of common sense, that at least enough money was likely to be generated by the sales of the comic to pay the printer and paper bill. And they stressed that their client, My Little Company, would only receive any money when and if the printer had been paid in full. This was the key. Business must have been slow because the printer had been paid in full. This was the key. Business must have been slow because the printer agreed.

I secretly suspect that he did so as much to keep me from constantly badgering him as anything else. Persistence is a powerful tool in the hands of a hungry young hustler on the make. Thus it was that the first issue of Cosmic Comics was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. It barely made a cent, but it provided the framework for yet more publishing ventures. Within two years, I had 60,000 pounds in the bank. That is the equivalent of a half a million pounds today. The printers were paid. The contributors were paid. The designers were paid. The landlord was paid. Even Dick and I were paid. Above all, I retained control of the company, a company I still own 100%

of 35 years later. Some will argue that what I did back in 1972 could not be emulated today. But human nature does not change. And at a bottom, we are cooperative animals. Many people are indulgent toward the young. After all, we were all once young ourselves. Those who wish to start a company and get rich cannot expect a free ride. But they might be surprised at the number of people in their particular pond willing to help them to some degree or another. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is How to Get Rich. One of the world's greatest entrepreneurs shares his secret, and it was written by Felix Dennis. So this book is actually one of the most requested books by listeners for me to cover for the

podcast. And I was actually hesitant to read it because of the title. The title just seems so cringy, How to Get Rich. And I realized after reading it and going over my notes, the better title is How I Got Rich. So if you keep that in mind as we work through all the main points today, I think that's a better way to think about why he wrote the book. And I have to give him credit. I think the reason this is so highly recommended and even all the reviews in media are extremely positive about it. He's a really gifted marketer. There's not another book that I've read so far for the podcast that's anything like this.

It is a bizarre, bizarre book. The format is bizarre. What he talks about, he's very frank. So let's go right to the preface. And again, this is a preface that's not normal. It's a series of like questions that he's posing and then his answers, which are very amusing. So I'm not going to waste any more time. Let's just get into it. So he starts with a question, and we're going to find out why Felix is writing this book.

I should give you a little background. He is one of, or he was, he passed away a few short years after he wrote the book, but he was one of the most successful publishers in the UK. He founded a bunch of magazines, maybe the most famous magazine is Maxim magazine. He also owned a bunch of like PC and computer magazines. And so he owned 100% of a gigantic publishing company. That's how he made his money. Okay, so it says, why would a rich person waste time writing a book to help other people get rich? And he says, two reasons, because I enjoy writing about something I feel I

know about. And because I believe that almost anyone of reasonable intelligence can become rich, given sufficient motivation and application. Another question, he says, is this some kind of con job? Are you using a ghostwriter? Nope and nope. How to get rich is not a con job and it is not being ghostwritten. I'm going to write every word myself in this book. Lord, help me. It will contain no jargon or mumbo jumbo. And it's certainly not one of those messianic self-improvement manuals seeking to spawn a cottage industry of tapes, DVDs, and dubious hour-long commercials on late-night television.

So that's exactly what I thought of when I saw the video. And what's really interesting is if you read reviews of this book online, he talks about, he's going to tell you how he got rich, and then a lot is a philosophical question throughout the book is, is this really what you want? And so he's going to open up to us. He's going to talk about his drug addiction, his addiction to prostitutes, the fact that he blew $100 million in a decade and almost died, the fact that he's not really happy. This is not what, again, it's really, really surprising.

The difference between what's in the book and the outside cover. He's sitting there between two gold statues and you, you know, you got this ridiculous title. So it's really, really surprising. Let me go back to this part. How to Get Rich sets to tell you out how I did it. How I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital. It will expose the many errors I made along the way,

which will contribute greatly to the length. Finally, it will suggest ways in which you can avoid such errors and start on getting rich. Another question, what will I need to do apart from reading the book? All the usual stuff. The bottom line is that if I did it, you can do it too. I went from being a pauper, a hippie dropout on welfare, living in a crummy room without the proverbial pot to piss in without even the money to pay the rent with and that was he's taught he's describing his life when he was around 25 years old without a clue as to what to do next to being rich and i am certainly no business genius as my rivals will happily and swiftly confirm he asked another

question what's the difference between How to Get Rich and all the other books about becoming incredibly successful? Simple. I am not a charlatan and do not profess to be a miracle worker. How to Get Rich is being written for amusement, not just effect. And because I have little left to prove in the field of generating wealth, my book is as truthful and as complete as I can make it. I did not become rich by writing manuals telling other people how to get rich. I got rich my way. You might even say the old-fashioned way. By making errors.

Lots of errors and learning from them. Much of what I intend to share with you concerns those errors rather than my successes. Another question. How rich are you anyway? I don't know. Neither does any rich person know. I haven't cashed in all my assets yet and I'm not certain what they will fetch. Let's say between 400 million US dollars and 900 million US dollars of net worth before tax.

I honestly cannot fix a number any closer to that. Five homes, three estates, fancy cars, private jets. The jets are always rented. Thousands of acres of land, art on the walls and library stuff with first editions. Less the debt, of course. I have around $30 million of debt. Rich people always seem to have a certain degree of debt. Apparently it helps to reduce taxes, but I'm not so hot on the bean counting side. In fact, I still haven't quite gotten the hang of a balance sheet. Amorization always floors me. But then, I can't fly the jets or drive the Rolls Royces or Bentleys either.

I never had the time or the inclination to learn. My constant refrain when I was bumming rides from friends as a teenager was, you don't understand. I was born to be driven. Both my friends and myself thought I was just a smart aleck remark back then. Now I kind of wonder if I already knew or at least suspected. One or two more questions and then let's just move on. Honestly speaking, what kind of people get to become rich?

An interesting topic. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. By which I suppose he meant that they appear to have an acquired characteristics that set them apart from lesser mortals. Ernest Hemingway's response was, yes, they're different. They have more money. Typical Hemingway. But his riposte isn't entirely satisfactory. Here is Richard Rumble, an English republican conspirator speaking from the

scaffold in 1685 so let me just stop here i think it's gonna become obvious but so he always pokes fun at himself for for not being educated but he's extremely well read he dedicates a lot of his time to to writing and performing poetry all over the world this is a very interesting bizarre person but i would say that what makes this book so uh pleasurable to read is is stuff like this where you can tear clearly see he's read a lot of history he's written biographies he's read a lot of biographies um he's he made him maybe formally educated but this is not a stupid person by any means uh so it says uh this is uh richard rumble talking in 1685. I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and brittle to be ridden.

So he's talking about, you know, there's a few people, very driven. They're the ones pushing the pace, the ones leading everybody, and then millions of other people allowing themselves to be ridden by other people. And now he's going back to his point. And he's still trying to answer this question about what kind of people get to be rich. And neither gentle reader could I. I never could believe that. Whatever qualities the rich may have, they can be acquired by anyone with the tenacity to become rich. The key, I think, is confidence.

Confidence and an unshakable belief that it can be done and that you are the one to do it. Tunnel vision helps. Being a bit of a shit helps. A thick skin helps. Stamina is crucial, as is the capacity to work so hard that your best friends mock you, your lovers despair, and the rest of your acquaintances watch from the sidelines, half in awe and half in contempt. Luck helps, but only if you don't seek it. The answer to the question then is perhaps this, not those who want to and not those who need to, but those who are utterly determined, and he emphasized that word, who are utterly determined to whatever the cost.

I think this is his last question, is it? Yeah. What are the biggest myths you know regarding getting rich? The first is the claim that people did not set out to get rich, but became rich by accident. Oh, I only did what I love to do and woke up one day to find myself wealthy, that sort of thing. It may have happened, but very rarely in my experience. Some people are merely better at disguising desire. That's all. The second myth is that people got rich by having a great idea. While this is a more feasible hypothesis than of getting rich by accident, it's a trap because it's a partial truth. All of us have had great ideas from time to time. The follow-through, the execution,

is a thousand times more important than a great idea. In fact, if the execution is perfect, it sometimes barely matters what the idea is. If you want to get rich, don't sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. Just get busy getting rich. Thirdly and lastly, I think that perhaps the most destructive myth

about becoming rich lies in the remarks like, well, it was okay for you starting out in the late 1960s, but times have moved on. You couldn't do it that way today. Perhaps not, but you can certainly do it some way. Times change, but human nature, the lure of wealth, and the determination to acquire it remain a shining constant in the world of ambitious men and women. The example of others not even born in the 1960s is all around you. They prove such thinking to be false. If you think it can't be done and dwell on that thought too long, then you are likely to remain poor. It's as simple as that.

Okay, so let's move into the book. This is a part where he calls it young, penniless, and inexperienced. He's talking about like, what do you do if you're starting on in circumstances like that? I would say this is the advantages of being a PSD, which we've talked about in the past.

A large percentage of the people that we cover on the podcast started out poor, smart, and determined. So he says, excellent. You stand by far the best chance of becoming as rich as you please. You have an advantage that neither an education nor upbringing nor even money can buy. You have almost nothing. And therefore, you have almost nothing to lose. Nearly all the great fortunes acquired by entrepreneurs arose because they had nothing to lose. Nobody had bothered to tell them that such and such a thing could not be done or would be likely to fail. Or if they had told them, then they weren't listening. They were too busy proving

those around them wrong without even meaning to. So he references a few times in the book, his love of biographies. I think, again, I'm trying to evangelize to you that just read as many biographies of great people, regardless of who you feel is great, as you can. Because I think that paragraph that he's talking about is true. In my experience, I've read over, what, 133 or however many it's been so far. That's a good, that's a, as you could tell, he's read a lot too, uh,

based on that paragraph is what I'm trying to tell you. Not knowing that something cannot be done. You were likely to waltz into uncharted minefields where angels before you have feared to dance. Never trust the vast mountain of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom, don'ts initiative and offers far too many convenient reasons for inaction, especially for those with a great deal to lose. Treasure that instinctive knowledge. That's a great way to describe that one paragraph that he's saying.

They have instinctive knowledge. They believe it can be done because they think it can be done. The next page he talks about, he continues to expound on this idea that you should trust your instincts. So this is on trusting your instincts and ignoring conventional wisdom and how that can be beneficial. The first few million pounds I ever trousered were a direct result of my trusting instincts entirely at odds with conventional wisdom of any sort. Two immediate examples leap to mind. As we will see in more detail later, I published a series of eight full-page, full-color folded posters with headlines and articles printed on the back of them,

and charged the same cover price as magazines with 10 times the number of pages. The result was dubbed a poster magazine and sold millions of copies around the world. Nobody had told me it couldn't be done because nobody had done it before. Similarly, I had launched half a dozen magazines about a new fad called personal computing back in the 1980s. Even though British magazine retailers and wholesalers at the time were unanimous in their belief that nobody will ever buy them. Those magazines have earned me tens of millions of pounds in the last 25 years and are still earning me money today. Conventional wisdom is usually right, but when it's wrong, it can offer

quite extraordinary opportunities for those too stubborn or too inexperienced to pay attention to well-meaning naysayers. He wraps up this section about why it's a benefit to be poor, smart,, determined. Stick with me, young brother or sister. You are suffering from nothing more than excusable confusion and a lack of experience, conditions that will pass with time and whose passing can be expedited by fierce determination and application. So this is the next section I'm going to read to you. This is the first of, I don't even know, dozens of times where he's going to, the book is about how I got rich. You know, you can take some of these lessons if you want to get rich on how to do that, right?

In, sprinkle throughout the entire book and wait till I get to the end. The end, you got to listen to this. It's one of the most remarkable, he calls it, it's like, he says it's the most important 1500 words in the whole book. It is really unexpected. The, the, the, um, I would say the summary of his thoughts on this subject. Right. But this is the first time where he, we talks about like, are you sure you want money? Like, is this, are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do? And he talks about the fact that he would give all of his money back for time. So he says, could you turn the clock back for me for by 40 years? I would willingly swap you every penny and every possession I own in return.

And I would have the better of the bargain, too. Just keep that in mind, because he's going to expound on that thought. And I would say it's a philosophy ingrained in his mind through decades of experience, many times throughout the book. Moving on, this is advice that you need to know when, you need to know what or when is enough. And I read some other reviews and this part I'm about to read to you is particularly, was highlighted by a bunch of other people that read the book too it says uh if i had my time again knowing what i know today i would dedicate myself to making just enough money to live comfortably so he's going to switch from dollars to pounds here and he says that number he would chew for

is 60 to 80 million dollars as quickly as i could i would then cash out immediately and retire to write poetry and plant trees that's what he's doing with i'll talk more about this later but one of his goals in life was to to plant a gigantic forest inside of i don't know if it was inside of london particularly but somewhere in england he says making money was and still is fun but at one time it wrecked chaos upon my private life. It blocked me from beginning to write poetry until my early 50s. It consumed my waking hours. It led me into, and here we're going to get into a lot of these details I referenced earlier.

It led me into a lifestyle of narcotics, high class whores, drink and debauchery uh narcotics he mentions he was addicted to cocaine uh specifically but i know he did a bunch of other drugs too these afflictions in turn helped to undermine my health i always craved just one more massive payday one more fight i can take this young punk i know i can just this once so i can go out as a winner so I can retire as a champ then I'll retire just this last one so he's exposing us to some of his inner monologue as he as he was addicted to to making money and now this is how he's looking about he's looking back on his life remember he's writing this a few years before he dies and he dies of throat cancer at the age of 67 so there is a it's never in the book, but I highly suspect he knew he was close to the end of his life. Pathetic.

I should have known better. There's no such thing as a permanent champ. With hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, I could just, I could not let go. And so this is a summary of the entire section. Real winners are people who know their limits and respect them. And so that's how the book goes. It goes back and forth between this is how I did it. These are some good ideas. This is the mistakes I made. And also, this is also the mistakes I made going to maybe a step too far.

He does have some good ideas like this development or mental armor. If you wish to be rich, you must grow a mental armor. Not so thick as to blind you to well-constructed criticism and advice, especially from those you trust, nor so thick as to cut you off from friends and family, but thick enough to shrug off the inevitable snickering and malicious mockery that will follow your inevitable failures, not to mention the poorly hidden envy

that will accompany your eventual success. It hurts, it's mindless, and it doesn't mean anything. But it will happen. Be prepared to shrug it off. He's got a great section called Harnessing the Fear of Failure. This reminds me of something I learned from Jimmy Iovine a long time ago. He talks about how he trained himself that any time our initial reaction to fear is, you know, we hesitate, we stop, or we run away.

And so Jimmy was like, any time I felt fear, i used it as instead of something that's holding me back it's something that's pushing me forward and this is uh it kind of echoes what dennis is saying here or excuse me what felix is saying here uh think of the sphere not as the king kong of our boogeyman but as a mare a nightmare a mare after all is a horse a horse can be tamed bridled saddled harnessed So he also has this idea that choosing what you do for a living may be the biggest decision that you ever make in life a decision that you have control over you obviously don't control who your parents are where you're born uh you know any your gender your race any of that stuff uh but his point here is that most people don't even choose it's the biggest decision that you

have control over and most people don't even think it's a choice he starts off with this section by quoting johan wolfgang van gogh von goeth i don't know how to pronounce his last name uh so this is a quote from him until one is committed there is hesitancy the chance to draw back always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elemental truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one commits oneself, providence moves all. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. Meaning after you commit, after you actually decide this is what I'm going to go do and you start walking forward towards that. A whole stream of events issues from that decision, raising in one's favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance,

which no one could have dreamed would come his or her way. So now we're going to get into the words of Felix. The biggest decision over which any of us is likely to exercise real control, meaning what are you going to do for a living? But we do get to choose if we are determined enough what it is we want to do for a living. Most of us flunk this test. My career as an entrepreneur or magazine publisher came about entirely by accident. If you had asked me when I was 18 years old what I would be doing for the next 30 years, I would have told you I was going to be one of the biggest R&B singers in the world. That made me laugh, but he's dead serious. He actually, there's a story I'm going to tell you in a little bit about him trying to sing R&B in front of John Lennon and John Lennon's advice to

him. That didn't happen. And if I'm honest about it, I'm still a little disgusted with myself that I quit my dream so early, but Hey, I was getting tired of stealing food and bumming other people's cigarettes and not having to rent money he also talks about a mistake that he sees a lot of young people make is they only want to work in glamorous industries or jobs or that's where they want to start their company and he's his point is like listen there's plenty of unglamorous businesses and opportunities that exist where's the most opportunity to be found forget glamorous one of the richest self-made men i know digs a hole in the ground to dispose of household waste that's not how his company describes itself in its annual report but essentially that's what it does along with

building incineration plants glamorous no but in a good, he earns 20 to 30 million pounds. That's a sensational result for a small, wholly owned private company. That's also another hint. Felix is not a fan of public companies. He goes in great detail about that. And he's also not a fan of having any partners or getting any kind of control either. So he says that's a sensational result for a small, wholly owned private company. You may not necessarily want to be in a glamorous sector

of any market because they are often very crowded sectors. So he talks over and over again in the book about you need to maintain ownership. You need to maintain control. It's the most important thing. He says control is often the be all and end all of the game. Whoever controls a business can force its sale. Whoever controls a business can implement a merger. Whoever controls a business can fire you. Ownership is power. As Bill Gates of Microsoft or Larry Ellison of Oracle. I just did this three part series on Larry Ellison. If you've listened to them, you already know this. but Larry fought tooth and nail to never give away any equity. He always retained enough equity even after Oracle went public so that his his control of the company could never seriously be threatened. Even when every single one of his financial advisors, when Oracle was in a tough financial position, like you need to sell equity right now. He refused. And, you know, that was key. That was one of the reasons, you know, he has such a high network today. OK, so now I got I got to the part where he's getting advice from John Lennon. And I would summarize this advice that John Lennon gives Felix as find your own voice.

I once had a wake up call from a man who spared me several years of wasted time in my own search for a future career. And when John Lennon handed out advice, he didn't pull any punches. I stayed at John's house while he was laying down bass tracks for his album Imagine. During a break, I persuaded a few of the musicians in the studio to back me while I belted out a couple of R&B songs. John and Yoko were amused at my efforts. John stopped our impromptu jam session and ushered me into the control room. Then he played back the tape, urging me to listen carefully. What do you hear? I heard a guy who wants to be an R&B singer, I mumbled. Yeah, but what you heard was an English guy copying Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry's voice. But it isn't your voice. Now do one using your own voice.

I went back into the studio and I tried. What followed was a catastrophe. I had no voice of my own. I had been singing R&B on stage ever since I was 13. But I never developed my own voice. I always imitated the voice of the original artist. John delivered some devastating advice. It won't do, man. It's not that you can't sing. Sure, you can do a fair imitation of Chuck or Chuck Berry or whatever, but people don't pay for imitations. You got to find your own voice or stick to editing your magazines. He has an entire chapter dedicated to not giving up. So this is on determination and hard things. It starts out with a quote from Winston Churchill, never give in, never give in, never, never, never in nothing greater, small,

larger, petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. And then we have some poetry. Is this written by him? Nope, it's written by another poet, but he's going to quote. It says, I tried to whistle, I tried to be brave, but the new plowed field smelled dank as grave, and I wished I were dead.

So he's going to compare that feeling that the poet is experiencing with the feeling that he had when he was building his business. I know that feeling. And if you're set out on creating your own business from scratch, then you will too. Despite all my brave words and earlier in the book, I never knew a few worse months than when I was bashing my head against a brick wall attempting to start my own outfit in the early 1970s. The whole process was pure misery. Looking back through the prismed eyes of a champagne flute, I suppose I could argue

that perhaps it was my finest moment. Not that it felt like it at the time. To be honest, it nearly broke me. But I would not give in. That was the secret ingredient. I would not take no for an answer. I would not give in. I was going to be rich. Somehow, some way, someday soon. And I would not retreat to the safety of a decent job until I starved out of house and home. I would not give in. Britten appeared, you know, he's going to talk about the overall conditions when he was building his business. Britten appeared to be in terminal financial decline at the time. Interest rates had skyrocketed and strikes were so commonplace it was difficult to recall a landscape not driven by demonstrations, protests, lockouts, and industrial disputes.

The banks and the markets weren't just skittish, they were downright terrified. Property values either soared or collapsed. Politicians were jittery. IRA bombs were exploding left, right, and center. These were not good times. What fueled me was the desperation of knowing that unless I found a way around my lack of capital, unless I could pour my energy into a venture of my own, I would be condemned to a life of wage slavery. There is absolutely nothing more likely to dampen the prospects of becoming rich than a

nice, fat, regular salary check. But I would not give in. I remember a bitter winter night in my West End flat at the back of a sweatshop. Edward Heath's three-day week was in operation, and some daft minister had suggested that the citizens of the UK should learn to shave in the dark to save electricity. That was nothing new to me. The electricity had been turned off in my flat weeks ago. So had the gas. I couldn't afford to pay the bill. I sat by an open fire, feeding broken furniture that I had scavenged from the trash into my living room

fireplace. And while he's sitting there burning furniture, his girlfriend at the time who has a normal job, she's like, just quit, just stop doing this, give up. And she winds up leaving him because he won't. So now he hits on what you learn by reading biographies. And the summary of this is they don't give in. If you happen to read biographies as I do, scores of them every year, you will find a thread that runs through almost any story of success against the odds. In one of the finest such books in the world, Letters to My Brother by the artist Vincent Van Gogh, you will find unbearable heartbreak, madness, rejection, hunger, passion,

nightmare terrors, and a tale of a man who never gave in, who would not give in, though it cost him his life. So this next section is about not treating life as some kind of rehearsal. I'm going to read it to you first, and I'm going to tell you this quote by Steve Jobs that I thought of when I read this section. Life is not some kind of rehearsal. Why then do so many people punish themselves in this way? The answer in almost every case is that they were persuaded or hectored into becoming a banker or a lawyer, when in reality they would have preferred to do something else entirely. Their misery is made all the worse by the realization that had they acknowledged their lack of enthusiasm early on and stuck to their guns, their well might have well taken a far

more congenial course it is my hope that this book will cause you to consider very carefully whether you are truly driven by inner demons to be rich that's a hell of a sentence if you really think about what he's saying there you kind of he's giving you a hint which he'll expound on the you know he comes out and says flat out at the end of the book what he feels saying there. He's giving you a hint, which he'll expound on. He comes out and says flat out at the end of the book what he feels. So let me read that sentence again. I think it's important. It is my hope that this book will cause you to consider very carefully whether you are truly driven by inner demons to be rich. If you are not, then my earnest and heartfelt advice to you is do not on any account make the attempt.

What are riches anyway compared to health or the peace of mind that even a modicum of contentment brings in its wake? In and of itself, great wealth very rarely, if ever, breeds contentment. Do not mistake desire for compulsion. So think about this. He's really writing to himself he's writing this is how i interpret the book at least he's writing to an earlier version of himself and i also think one thing i do think there's people that are obviously like there's there's happy

and sad people in all kinds of uh different circumstances there's happy poor people there's sad poor people there's happy rich people there's sad poor uh rich people right um but i would say is he'd ever one thing i think would have contributed more to his happiness is he was very successful magazine publishing but he even comes on set he's like am i a magazine publisher because i love magazines no i just thought i could make a lot of money at it and i think that's i want you to know that as he as he's saying this to us because I think it's vastly different if you wind up having all the financial success that you want, doing something you really wanted to do, versus having a lot of financial success doing something you don't want to do. I don't think those are two of the same things at all. So let's go back to this sentence.

What are riches anyway compared to the health or the peace of mind that even a modicum of contentment brings in its wake? Remember, he's flat out at the end of the book, he tells us he's not happy. In and of itself, great wealth very rarely, if ever, breeds contentment. Do not mistake desire for compulsion. Only you can know the song of your inner demons. That's extremely important. No one else can know. No one else can tell you.

So when I read that section, I thought of something. The solution to figuring out if you're on the right path or not, I think, came from this idea that Steve Jobs had that I read in his biography. This is in the biography by Isaacson. OK, so Steve said he said, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself if today were the last day of my life, what I want to do and I'm about to do today. And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Moving ahead, I really loved his frank and honest account. He talks about, I'm going to give you a summary here, but he's talking to a senior accountant and he's like, he's talking to a senior accountant. He's like, please explain what a balance sheet was

me. Balance sheet is to me me and the accountant was astonished and he asked he said how did you become a multi-millionaire many times over without even understanding a balance sheet he's like because i don't i didn't he uh his opinion is you know balance sheets are for he calls them bean counters over and over again the books he goes i understand cash flow and so this is his opinion on the most important metric of your business being cash flow cash flow is something that any entrepreneur must fully comprehend from the get-go. Balance sheets are a matter for accountants, banks, and auditors, but cash flow is the heartbeat of your company. If cash flow is good, then no matter how badly run or poorly managed a company is, there is always a decent chance of

turning its fortunes around. And one of my favorite quotes, I reference it all the time, comes to the founder of Sequoia. His name is Don Valentine. And he, I love this. He says, there are two things in business that matter. And you can learn this in two minutes, high gross margins and cashflow. All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason, they run out of money. And so I think Felix and Don do so for the same reason. They run out of money. And so I think Felix and Don are essentially saying the same thing. Watch your cash. This other idea that I think is also important and true,

success is never permanent. Just because you have a success or two under your belt doesn't mean you have it made. 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 churchill again but he was but he was bang on the money there once you begin to this is the resting on your laurels is another way to think about the section okay once you begin to believe that you are infallible, that success will automatically lead to more success that you've

got it made reality, you'll be sure to give you a rude wake up call. Believing your own bullshit is always a perilous activity, but never more fatal than the, than the owner of a startup venture. And so, um, the anecdote to this, which he's going to continue here in a minute, I would summarize as think big, but act small. He says, all the times I got in trouble in my life, I was acting big. And that's when he's, well, he's going to talk.

This is just a crazy section. You ready? I know all this because in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, I forgot to remember to act small. I spent millions of dollars on drinking, drugs, and running around with whores. I lost all respect for money and for the blood, sweat, and treasure I had expended to acquire it. I was acting big.

In a single decade, I got through more than $100 million living high on the hog. At one time, there was no less than 14 mistresses. He puts that in quotations of Mark. He's essentially paying for a female companionship here. There were no less than 14 mistresses, depending on a regular stipend from my personal bank account. A single evening's entertainment could come to $30,000 or $40,000. There was nothing I could not do.

I was the king of the world. I was acting big. Even though I was not so foolish as to use company money for this idiocy, my business still suffered and my health suffered. So he winds up in the hospital and they're saying, listen, if you don't get off the drugs and the alcohol and the nightlife right now, you're going to die. he eventually stops drugs completely and the only drinks uh only thing he'll drink like the only alcohol he drinks after that is uh wine um something

to note he almost dies from legionnaire disease at this time but um while he's he's telling us about that experience i really feel this sentence is a way that he's describing the person he was in the late 80s and early 1990s uh it is especially lethal to a coked up overweight cigarette smoking malt whiskey swilling idiot with too much money who believe they are built of titanium see what i mean about is honestly though it does make the book um very interesting like it does make it a very interesting read. Again, I know I've said this over and over again. I can see why so many people recommended it.

OK, so this is one of my favorite sections of the book. I just absolutely love it. It's something I also personally believe. It's the importance of self-belief. And then he's going to quote again heavily from Winston Churchill. We may detest arrogance. Yet isn't it true that we admire it a little? Even though arrogance is a poor, shabby thing compared with rooted self-belief, it is an imitation of the real thing.

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 usually a dollop of arrogance have changed the destiny of nations. We 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 unshakable self-belief was for a while, all that Britain contained in its arsenal after Dunkirk. Have you seen that movie Dunkirk, by the way? It's one of my favorite movies in the last

several years. 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? What language would we be now? What language would we 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 have never 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 or to hear the recordings of them is to understand the astonishing power and mesmerizing 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 meant more to Britain at that moment than all the other kings and queens in her long history. For just one moment, a democratic people were saved

from fear of failure and from 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 child of his time. But I do ask that you begin right now, right at this very moment, to ask yourself whether you believe in yourself. Truly, do you believe in yourself? Do you? If you do not, and worse still, if you believe you can never believe,

then by all means go on reading this book. But take it from me. Your only chance of getting rich will come from the lottery or inheritance. If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Without self-belief, nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible. So he's got an entire chapter. It's called Ownership, Ownership, nothing is impossible. So he's got an entire chapter. It's called Ownership, Ownership, Ownership.

It tells you how important it is. But I particularly appreciated a bunch of his paragraphs in this section. This one idea I really liked. Appreciate the absurdity of the chase. My amateurish musings illustrate very nicely just how idiotic the getting of wealth as a goal in and of itself really is. Ah, but you could argue, that's very well for you. You have already made your pile. It's easy to be philosophical when

you've already amassed a fortune. And my reply would be that there is truth in that. But there's also truth in the assertion that I may well have been only able to put a few hundred million dollars in the bank because I recognized that this getting rich malarkey is just a game, a delusion, if you will. Being rich is fine. And at the very least, it's better than being poor,

but it shouldn't be the be-all and end-all of your life or anyone else's life. If you chase money desperately in the earnest belief that you can never be happy without it, and seriously think that the chase is a meaningful occupation, I doubt very much you will succeed. You have to be fiercely determined. True. But an appreciation of the absurdity of the chase helps enormously. All right, moving ahead, we get to his main point of this chapter. And the heading he put on it is why ownership isn't the important thing. It's the only thing. If you want to be rich, then I ask you to stop skipping paragraphs and play close attention. To become rich, you must be an owner and you must try to own it all. You must strive with every fiber of your being while recognizing the idiocy of your behavior to own and retain

control of as near to 100% of any company as you can. Never, never, never, never hand out a single share of anything you've acquired or created if you can help it. Nothing, not one share to anyone, no matter what the reason, unless you genuinely have to. Do you remember my old rivals, Robin and David from the EMAP? So there's another publishing company in England. He says they were both far better publishers than I will ever be. On my best day, they would have wiped the floor with me. But after a quarter of century of jointly creating one of the biggest media companies in Britain for EMAP shareholders, what did they get for their pains? I don't know exactly, of course, and I wouldn't tell you if I did, but I'll guess using current market norms, 6 million, 10 million, maybe 20 million. You mean that's it? That's all there

is after busting your balls for the better part of your working life and making hundreds of shareholders and lawyers and banks immensely rich? A few measly million dollars less tax? That's shocking. I've made more than that in deals I can barely remember. I once made a million dollars by selling a magazine I had not even published yet to a rival. A million dollars for a day's work? And why?

Why? Why? Because I owned it. I owned it all. And my dear friends David and Robin never owned anything during their time except for a pile of share options, a good salary, and a lovely pension. Please think about this if you want to be rich. Ownership is not the most important thing. It is the only thing that counts. So my interpretation of this next section is this is the answer to the question. Is it worth it? And it seems to be his answer to be both yes and no. So is it worth it?

Should we pursue the pie at all? This is not a question for me to consider here at any length. I have become a poet, a serious one too, and I wrestle with such questions every day in the three hours I put aside to write verses. But you are not to consider this. You are to consider that I might well be a hypocrite because I took to writing poetry after I had laid up my treasure. I have wasted vast amounts of my life laying up treasure. I have exiled myself for months at a time to plunder

the riches of the USA and to bring them back to Europe. Many are the nights I lay awake in my New York City apartment listening to the eerie sirens and street sounds which define that great city, while I dreamed of spring in an English country garden thousands of miles away. So not only is the writing of this book extremely unique, but also the format. You don't have to read it straight through if you wind up buying the book. You can pick up, just go to whatever chapter heading you think is interesting. So he'll write, you know, explaining why he thinks the way he does and use stories. And then sometimes he just uses a bunch of like numbered lists. It's really unique.

So I want to read a few ideas he has. These are just, you know, straightforward ideas. I don't think I have to expound on too much here. And it's in a section called 21 Ways to Make More Pie. So I'm not going to cover all 21. I'm just going to pick out some ones I thought were interesting. And he's going to describe the section. He says, here's what I've learned as far as owning, sharing,

and growing your annual pie is concerned. None of this should be written in stone. I suspect some of the points that follow are universal truths. Keep costs down, always. Overhead walks on two legs, and it will eat you out of house and home. No company, new or old, can avoid stealth growth in overhead. It occurs, as it were, by osmosis.

Prune overhead regularly. Stop only when the pips squeak. Praise excellent work. But do not waste your praise on ho-hum performances as a sop. Employees respect a boss who knows the difference between the mundane and the exceptional. Remember that not all employees respond well to incentive bonuses or a dangled carrot of any kind. They seek recognition, not bribery. Avoid all jollies, the generic British term for flying the sales team to Florida in

winter to boost morale and issue heart-thumping speeches, all of which are forgotten the second the crew hits the beach. You can't afford jollies. Set an example. If as an owner you want fancy furniture in your office or works of art or Persian rugs, then bloody well pay for them yourself. How can you expect frugality when a junior manager who works in a cubicle comes to visit you, knowing that the company paid for those accessories? There's nothing wrong with them being there. It's who paid for them that counts. Interview your rival's talent. I have never known a single person in a rival organization, however well paid, who has refused to meet me

for a quiet drink after work. I have discovered more about what my rivals are up to in this manner than any other. In addition, I have often been so impressed with the people I meet in this way that I poach them later.

No intelligence-gathering exercise is ever entirely wasted in business. There is only so much pie and talent bakes that pie. Just a few more from the section. Sell early. Real money rarely comes from horsing around running an asset-laden business if you are an entrepreneur. You are not a manager, remember? You are trying to get rich. Whenever the chance comes to sell an asset at the top of its value, do so. Things do not keep increasing in value forever. Get out while the going is good and move on to the next venture. More money is usually lost holding on to an asset than is made waiting for the zenith of its value. I should know. It's one of my biggest defects. And finally, enjoy the business of making money. The loot is only a marker.

Time cannot be recaptured. There is no amount of pie in the world worth being miserable for day after day. If you find you dislike what you are doing, then sell up and change your life. It's the most important sentence of the section to me. Self-imposed misery is a kind of madness. The cure is to get out. So he has an entire chapter about the power of being focused and one heading is that you should focus on doing an outstanding job. And he says, if on my deathbed, I had only a very short time to pass, to pass on what wisdom I have accumulated about getting rich to a son or daughter, then it would be this.

Ownership shall be half the law. Doing an outstanding job shall be the other half. There's no point in owning 100% of a rubbish company. Whatever it is you intend to do to get rich, get good at it. Al Capone is said to have shot a man who kept brewing rotten beer for Capone's illegal beer distribution racket during Prohibition. His gang lieutenants didn't get it. The business was illegal anyway. But Capone refused to have his name associated with rubbish.

Having read his autobiography, I found myself wishing he stayed out of the rackets and built his fortune legally. He had many of the attributes of a world-class entrepreneur. And I'm going to close this conversation out with what he says is the most important part of the book. If you are young and reading this, then I ask you to remember just this. You are richer than anyone older than you and far richer than those who are much older. What you choose to do with the time that stretches out before you is entirely a matter for you. But do not say you started the journey poor. If you are young, you are infinitely richer than I ever can be again. Money is never owned. It is only in your custody for a while. Time is always running on, and the young have more of it in their pocket than the richest man or woman alive.

That is a sober fact. And yet you wish to waste your youth in the getting of money? Really? Think hard, my young cub. Think hard and think long before you embark on such a quest. The time spent attempting to acquire wealth will mount up and cannot be reclaimed. Whether you succeed or whether you fail. Even should you succeed in becoming rich, what will you have achieved?

Happiness? Do not make me laugh. The rich are not happy. I have yet to meet a single really rich happy man or woman, and I have met many rich people. The demands from others to share their wealth become so tiresome and so insistent, they nearly always decide they must insulate themselves.

Insulation breeds paranoia and arrogance and loneliness and rage that you have only so many years left to enjoy rolling in the sand you have piled up. The only people the self-made rich can trust are those who knew them before they were wealthy. For many newly rich people, the world becomes a smaller, less generous, and darker place. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Ridiculous and gloomy. But then, you are to consider that I have been very poor, and I am now very rich. I am an optimist by nature. But am I happy?

No. Or at least, only occasionally. When I'm walking in the woods alone, or deeply ensconced and composing a difficult piece of verse, or sitting quietly with old friends over a bottle of wine, or feeding a stray cat, I could do all those things without wealth. So why do I not give it all away? Because I work too hard for it. Because I'm tainted by it.

Because I'm afraid to. All those reasons and more. When I die, it's all going to a charity called the Forest of Dennis. You see, even when I do a good thing with my money, my ego insists that I name it for myself. Not a good sign. Giving away money when you're dead takes no guts, no courage. But to divest yourself of hundreds of millions of dollars or the greater part of your fortune before your death? That would be something to be proud of, don't you think?

For what is left afterward but a few tears by a graveside and years of bickering? But you must make your own choice. I have said my piece, and I meant every word of it. This small part of my book was composed in my mind years ago. It was easy to write. I knew all of it before my fingers touched the keyboard. It has troubled me for years, and I thank you for allowing me to share it. I suspect it will have little effect on you, though. You are probably young, and you are tired of being poor.

But can I ask you to do me just one small favor? Please lodge one fact in your memory, that the last 1,500 words was an important bit. In my heart of hearts, I know it was the most important bit you will read in this book. Mark it with a bookmark, and write today's date upon it. Come back to it in 20 or 30 years.

Then cast your mind back to a time when you were young and you first read this book and to the thoughts of a fool, a rich poet, long dead, who once typed these words sitting in one of the most beautiful houses on earth, staring at the turquoise sea, sipping a glass of chilled wine. That will be enough for me. That's 129 books down, 1,000 to go. If you want to buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

I will talk to you again soon.