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How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis, is like no other business book that I’ve ever read. And I’ve read hundreds of them.

It more than fulfills the promise that every business book makes: it’ll help you earn a lot more money. A lot more - Felix Dennis died having amassed a personal fortune of over $600,000,000. 

But, for reasons I’ll get into below, it’s tinged with sadness and regret, and a deep sense of loss for the life he could have lived, had he not been so obsessed with getting rich no matter what.

How to Get Rich is a cautionary tale, a success manual, an autobiography, and a work of literature all in one, and it’s my pleasure to present my full breakdown of the book tonight, with all the Key Ideas, Takeaways, Action Steps, and more.

So if you’re ready to get super rich, let’s get right into it!

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This Book is For:

*People who aren't willing to settle for a stable job and a relatively steady paycheck - who want to test their will in the open waters of the capitalist economy in the hopes of getting in, getting rich, and getting out before it's too late.

*Business owners who want to maximize revenue and profitability, and who aren't shy about doing whatever it takes to get their share of the proverbial pie.

*Anyone who thinks that money can solve everything, but who might be open to having their minds changed concerning how much is enough, when to stop, and what to do after their big exit.

Summary:

This is one of the rarest and most sincere "how to make a lot of money in business" books that you'll ever read, and interestingly enough, Felix Dennis spends a solid 15% of it trying to convince you not to bother.

During his life, Dennis built a UK magazine publishing empire and amassed a personal fortune of well over $600,000,000. But the book's somewhat tragic tone comes from the fact that he was racked with regret at the end of his life, writing this book from his cold, solitary castle, seemingly shaking you by the shoulders and saying, "Don't do it! Don't do it, or you'll end up like me!"

And yet…he almost can’t help himself. After his initial protests, he concedes: “Really? You still want to do this? Alright then - here’s how to get rich.” What follows is some of the best business advice out there, delivered in Dennis’s uniquely poetic, brutally honest style - advice that will make you rich, if you have the desire and the fortitude to follow it. Castle included.

Dennis went from college dropout to centimillionaire publishing magnate, all the while harboring an immense talent and love for poetry and literature. In fact, he even became a poet himself, performing some of it for audiences while he was alive. Looking back at his pursuit of riches from the end, however, he tells us that he (and probably you) would have been much happier had he known when to stop.

How to Get Rich is packed full of incredibly profound lessons on restraint, human desire, meaning and fulfillment, boldness, character and more, while also delivering astoundingly helpful lessons on things like negotiation, ownership and equity, and how to get what you want in life and business.

Unfortunately for Felix Dennis, he learned the lessons about restraint and desire too late, and it cost him everything. Fortunately for you, here in this book he lays bare everything he knows about the realities of starting and growing a business, what sorts of challenges you're likely to face on the way to becoming rich, and how to know who to trust as you keep breaking into new tax brackets. In other words, how to make your millions while dodging the bullets that took him out.

Just make sure you know what you're getting into. That's all that I and Felix Dennis ask of you! Getting rich can be a hell of a rush, and it has a way of taking over your whole life if you let it.

Same with running a business. It can be extremely difficult, it's uncertain, it can take a long time, it can ruin your relationships and alienate you from the people you work with, and once you get to a certain level of personal wealth, it can be very difficult to tell who your real friends are.

Even $600M couldn't save Felix from devastating dissatisfaction and regret, and it's unlikely that $700M would have done it either.

I believe (perhaps not too controversially) that being rich is better than being poor. Entrepreneurship, as a vehicle for personal transformation and expansion of the self is unmatched, in my opinion, second only to physical training, reading great books, and losing yourself in the service of others.

So I'm not going to tell you not to get rich, either. But you have to ask yourself, earnestly and sincerely: "Do I really want to do this?"

The answer is non-obvious and shouldn’t be rushed. Read this book first, and ask yourself whether you’re willing to pay the price that Dennis paid. Regardless of your answer, I think you'll agree that this is a very special book, and one that you won't soon forget.

READ THE FULL BOOK BREAKDOWN HERE

Key Ideas:

#1: Don’t Try to Get Rich - Go Plant Trees Instead

Most "how to get super rich" books spend the first 20-50 pages trying to hype you up, motivating you, and getting you to envision all the wonderful things that are going to happen once you finish reading the book and start to apply the author's teachings in your life.

Felix Dennis, who was way richer than most of the authors of books like that, was having none of it. He spends the majority of the book trying to convince you not to get rich at all.

The reason for this is simple, and more than a little tragic. Dennis spent virtually his entire life amassing more wealth than he could count (literally), and yet he wound up writing those words in what was essentially a cold, empty castle, absent the happy sounds of friends' voices, the play of children, and the warmth of a devoted family that could love him back.

From death's door, after it was too late to change course (Dennis died of throat cancer back in 2014), he was driven by two seemingly conflicting motivations: help sufficiently motivated people accumulate enough "F-U Money" to be able to do anything they wanted, and convince those same people that stacking up piles of cold, hard cash wouldn't save them from dying alone in a cold, empty castle.

Personally, I derived a double benefit from Dennis's book, and I'm sure he's helped many other people like me avoid making a deadly mistake. When I first read How to Get Rich, I was making more money than I ever had before, but I rarely saw my friends, virtually never went out (except to go to the grocery store and the gym), and was headed for an empty castle myself. Luckily, I was able to notice this in real time and course-correct before it was too late.

We can get so caught up in the singular pursuit of wealth (or anything, really) to the point where it takes over our whole life, and we forget that it's not the only thing that's important. That's what was happening to me, and what is happening to great multitudes of people today who are stuck endlessly competing, running faster and faster in a race to nowhere.

Nobody wins a race they don't want to be in, and Felix Dennis has the right idea here in that we should never lose sight of our ultimate aim. It's far too easy to overshoot it, only to wake up years later in a life we never wanted, one that's too difficult or too late to get out of. Sahil Bloom, in his excellent book, The 5 Types of Wealth, calls this winning the battle but losing the war.

What's helpful here is to get very clear on your "enough" number, and writing it down in a place where you can see it often. It's a number that, after you reach it, you decide that you can rest easy, knowing that you have enough. For myself, that number is about $50,000 per month in income, and I'm sure that if Dennis had ever sat down and decided on his "number," it wouldn't have been $600,000,000!

But perhaps even knowing your "enough" number isn't quite enough. Dennis hit on this idea, as well as a possible reason for this, in the following quote:

#2: Never, Ever, EVER Give In...Easily

There's a great quote often attributed to W.C. Fields, where he says, "If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it." That's pretty much the energy that Felix Dennis is bringing here.

Hard work, grit, and persistence are all wonderful traits, and they can serve you extremely well in life. But if something's obviously not working, don't be a damn fool about it! Have the self-awareness to recognize that what you're doing isn't working, and the courage - yes, the courage - to change course.

But Dennis brings up two very important points here, one of which is that, when faced with difficulty, you should be prepared to take at least a few steps more than what seems sensible, past the point where the 99 percenter would be okay with quitting. Go ten steps past that. That's where winning is.

At the same time, however, after taking those ten extra steps, if you see nothing happening - nothing at all - then you may want to re-evaluate your approach, take another look at your strategy, get some help, etc.

As you can see, there's a level of nuance here, and on a case-by-case basis, it can be very difficult to tell when you "should" give up. But if you're paying attention, you'll know. And, on the other hand, if you can see a path forward - if you can see the possibility of success - you must keep the faith. You must push on. You must.

#3: Why Intelligent People Fail in Life

In the book, Felix Dennis tells the story of a friend of his, Albert, and about the reasons why Albert never became as rich as Dennis did. It wasn't because Dennis was smarter, or had any other unfair advantages from birth. It was simply because Albert was capable of imagining defeat.

There's another fantastic book, Zorba the Greek (one of my favorites of all time, actually), where Zorba is telling the narrator not to be so much of a pen pusher. The latter's life was all paper and ink and books, to which he retreated instead of rushing out into the great wide world and living his actual life! The narrator's predicament is something I and many other people know a little something about. Maybe you do too. It's possible that you think too much and live too little.

You don't need to have your entire business plan laid out before you take the first step forward in belief. As they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so it's likely that your strategy and/or tactics will have to change anyway. None of that, however, is to say that you need to wait to take the first step. Start walking, and the way will appear.

Additionally, it's a waste of time to wish for other people's gifts or advantages. Cultivate your own. Develop your own strengths; create your own unfair advantages, and deploy them relentlessly.

It all comes down to taking massive action. Take the first step. Advance confidently in the direction of your greatest ambitions. Because Zorba was right: "Action! Action! No other salvation exists."

READ ALL THE KEY IDEAS HERE

Book Notes:

READ ALL THE BOOK NOTES HERE

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Action Steps:

#1: Calculate Your “Enough” Number

It's very, very hard to spend $5,000,000 a year. That's what Alex Becker says, anyway. For right now, I'll have to take his word for it.

But it checks out, especially once you dig into the numbers, which is an extremely worthwhile exercise for everyone to do before they wind up wasting away in a cold, dark, deserted castle, surrounded by $600,000,000 that they'll never get to spend.

Here in this first Action Step, you're going to calculate your "enough" number - the amount of money you'd need to earn per month (or per year, or have in the bank), to feel financially secure. Like you had enough.

For context, my "number" is $50,000 per month. I'd say that I'm about a year or two away from hitting that number, but even now I don't feel deprived of anything. That $50K per month would cover basically every single thing I ever wanted, including charitable donations, savings and investments, etc. If I hadn't gone through this exercise though, my number would likely be much higher.

I won't spend a lot of time on this, but just break it down.

Consider everything that most people lust over, and spend their time dreaming about acquiring. Even if you spend $10,000/month renting out a luxury apartment, $10,000/month on car payments for a Lamborghini Aventador, $1,000/week going out to expensive restaurants, $50,000/year buying expensive clothes, $100,000/year sending your kids to private school, $100,000/year going on expensive vacations, and add another, oh I don't know, $100,000/year for everything else, you're still "only" at $642,000/year in expenses.

Granted, that's not nothing, and you still have things like taxes, contributing to your investment accounts, giving to charity, etc., but it's a LONG way off from $5,000,000/year. And here you have people running around thinking they have to be billionaires! It's madness!

My point is that I think you'll find, that if you run the actual numbers, you won't need (or want) as much as you think you do. But also, don't be modest! Don't hold back. Don't minimize your own desires and try and tell yourself that you don't want something if you actually do.

The world is rich, opportunity is abundant, and a lot of happiness can be found in the pursuit itself. It's possible to be happy, yet still not satisfied. You can find happiness in the here and now, and yet still chase big income goals and buy expensive stuff. They're not mutually exclusive, but it can be a difficult balance to strike, and especially if you don't know your numbers!

#2: Pick Your Basket

Everything else rests on that goals you set out to achieve, and so I took some extra space in that last Action Step to help you avoid wasting years of your life earning money that you don't need and will never spend. Next, we have another extremely important decision to make: how you plan on getting rich.

There are multitudes of ways to go about getting rich, and this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list, but in Rich Habits, Thomas C. Corley lays out several possible paths to riches that are available to you. You don't necessarily have to start a business like Felix Dennis did, although that can be the fastest route to take.

Patient saving and investing can make you rich, it's just that it takes an extremely long time, and you'll live through periods where your stock portfolio takes an absolute thrashing, and there's nothing you can do about it (or should do about it) except watch it drop, and wait for it to stabilize and bounce back.

Starting a business is the path that I chose, and it's a great one if you have a higher risk/anxiety tolerance, you have a strong sense of independence, and you don't mind working 100-hour weeks in the beginning, so you can work 10-hour weeks 10 years from now.

Many of these different paths to wealth can be combined with the others, especially in cases where one might develop high-paying, in-demand skills, and earn a great living working for someone else. Think: doctors, lawyers, cyber-security experts, programmers, etc. You might earn a degree or certification in one of these fields, live extremely cheaply in your 20s and 30s, and basically retire when you're 35.

There are a multitude of ways to get rich in this world, but the common thread when it comes to succeeding with any of them involves becoming extremely knowledgeable and competent in your field, keeping your living expenses low while you invest in income-producing assets, avoiding "lifestyle inflation," or succumbing to the pressure to upgrade your lifestyle just to keep up with your favorite influencer, and most importantly: committing to the process.

#3: Cultivate Delusional Self-Belief

One of the "secrets" to my own success is that I never once (ever) believed that I wouldn't make it. That I wouldn't ultimately be successful, no matter what. I believed (and believe) in myself so strongly, that I absolutely, categorically refuse to entertain the notion that I could fail at anything that's truly important to me.

I'm talking just a fucking DELUSIONAL level of confidence, self-belief, and optimism. It's a force - a power and a presence that I bring into my daily life that helps me bend the universe to my will, and dominate any field I choose to enter.

You should hear the way I talk to myself! I may be all quiet and unassuming in person - interested in you and what you have to say (genuinely), and always willing to listen and learn. But when I'm by myself? Oh man. I am a force of fucking nature, within my own mind.

Again, this is more swearing than I typically do. But that's the kind of attitude you need to have as well. Naturally, you should still be polite and respectful to others, as I am. I dominate my own mind, I don't go around intent on dominating others. This is an inner game, one that I'm winning no matter what.

This is another common theme in the lives of other unreasonably successful people. It's said that Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field surrounding him at all times, helping him achieve the seemingly-impossible and make dents in the universe.

He's not the only one - not by a long shot - and if you want to be unreasonably successful, it's a habit of mind that you'd be well served to get into as well. If you want to be rich, there is no other way.

READ ALL THE ACTION STEPS HERE

This Book on Amazon:

How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis

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OK, that’s it for now…

I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!

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With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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