Confessions of a self-made multimillionaire

Confessions of a self-made multimillionaire
Stefan Stern
The Financial Times August 22 2006

“How To Get Rich: The Distilled Wisdom of One of Britain’s Wealthiest Self-made Entrepreneurs” By Felix Dennis, Ebury Press, $32.40

Know thyself, the Delphic oracle instructed her visitors. The German poet Goethe refused to follow her advice. “This has always seemed to me a deception practised by a secret order of priests, who wished to confuse humanity with impossible demands,” he said.

I feel almost the same way about Felix Dennis’s new book How To Get Rich. On the cover he grins out at readers, with confidence written all over his face. The word “rich” is printed in two inch-high red capitals.

In the course of 275 pages Dennis offers some very helpful advice, based on hard-won experience. You cannot fault the clarity of his writing, the sincerity of his views or the validity of the many and varied examples he provides.

And Dennis is very rich indeed – one of the 100 richest people in the UK, according to the famous “rich lists” (more of them later). Publishing has proved fruitful for him. He used to own Personal Computer World and MacUser, and still owns Maxim, Auto Express and The Week among other titles. Dennis feels unable to put a precise figure on his wealth, estimating it to lie somewhere “between $400m and $900m of net worth before tax”. So, pretty rich.

And yet, towards the end of the book, we read this: “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.... Am I happy? No. Or, at least, only occasionally....”

It is not until page 239, after we have learnt all there is to know about overcoming fear, “cutting loose”, focusing on execution not ideas, maintaining 100 per cent ownership of every venture, “living small and thinking big”, that the truth about this quest to be rich is revealed: “Seeking substantial wealth is almost always a fool’s game,” Dennis says. “Ask me what I will give you if you could wave a magic wand and give me my youth back. The answer would be everything I own and everything I will ever own.”

Before this gloom comes the good advice. Getting rich will almost certainly require extraordinarily hard work: there is no real luck in­volved. He quotes Seneca approvingly: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Fear of failure is what holds people back. “If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly, and even catastrophically, you stand very little chance of ever getting rich,” Dennis says.

You do not need a great idea to get rich. You do need to able to put ideas into practice. Not giving up is vital. Here Churchill is the author’s guide: “If you are going though hell, keep going,” the old man said.

Be ruthless on costs. “Keep payroll down to an absolute minimum,” Dennis says. “Overhead walks on two legs.” Every cost and outlay should be scrutinised. “Never buy a business meal if the other side offers to. You can show off later.” That applies to other misguided acquisitions too: “If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it. It’s cheaper in the long run.”

Never allow your self-belief to falter. “Without self-belief nothing can be accomplished,” Dennis says. “With it, nothing is impossible.” Hire talented people and then delegate as much to them as you possibly can. Cling on to 100 per cent ownership of your ventures: “Ownership is not the most important thing. IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS.”

All Dennis’s homilies and nuggets of advice are well-founded, based on his own 30 years as a successful entrepreneur. He has even identified what the psychologist Abraham Maslow discovered about motivation and our “hierarchy of needs” – although Dennis does not mention Maslow by name. Do not waste money trying to “incentivise” people who are not interested in money, Dennis says. Try courtesy, praise and fairness instead.

Having lived the life he has, there are few subjects on which Dennis cannot speak with some authority. “There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with orgies, parties, narcotics and booze – but they will kill you in the end,” he warns.

Dennis sends us these thoughts from his home in Mustique (one of several around the world). But just how rich is rich really? Dennis says the richer you are, the harder it is to know how much you are worth.

“If our paid armies of accountants cannot agree upon a figure, then compilers of lists and financial journalists certainly cannot do so with any real accuracy.” But he does know that he is rich in time.

In the end, the reader puts this book down richer (metaphorically speaking), but also sadder. “Never have I met a self-made rich man or woman whose family or relationships were not plagued by the burden of creating a fortune, even a small fortune,” the childless Dennis writes. “Somewhere in the invisible heart of all self-made wealthy men and women is a sliver of razored ice.”

“Know thyself?” Goethe said. “If I knew myself I’d run away.” I get the feeling that this is what Felix Dennis would like to do, too.