How to Get Rich

How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! How pleasant it is to have money.

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.

If you think that 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.

And just what is the most precious thing in life that riches can supply? Easy. For me, it’s Time.

Time. Time to read and write poetry if I want to. Or to write a book if it takes my fancy. Time to travel on the slightest whim, to walk in the woods, to think, to commission art, to read, to drink, to hang out with friends and loved ones...to do just about anything really, as long as it does not involve day after grinding day making money in an office or a factory for somebody else.

Rich enough to buy the only two things apart from health and love worth fussing about in life. Time.

Never trust the vast mountain of conventional wisdom. It contains great nuggets of wisdom, it is true. But they lie alongside rivers of fool’s gold.

Conventional wisdom is usually right. But when it is wrong, it can offer quite extraordinary opportunities for those too stubborn or inexperienced to pay attention to well-meaning naysayers.

Anyone not busy learning is busy dying. For as long as you foster a willingness to learn, you will ward off sclerosis of the brain and hardening of the mental arteries. Curiosity has led many a man and women into the valley of serious wealth.

I employ a great many people smarter than I am.

You are getting too comfortable.

(If you can afford it, always get someone else to do the grunt work.

It’s no excuse, but making money is a drug. Not the money itself. The making of the money.

Up to just seven years ago I was still working twelve to sixteen hours a day making money.

Because whoever dies with the most toys doesn’t win. Real winners are people who know their limits and respect them.

No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.

If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly, and even catastrophically, you stand very little chance of ever getting rich. • If you care what the neighbors think, you will never get rich. • If you cannot bear the thought of causing worry to your family, spouse or lover while you plow a lonely, dangerous road rather than taking the safe option of a regular job, you will never get rich. • If you have artistic inclinations and fear that the search for wealth will coarsen such talents or degrade them, you will never get rich. (Because your fear, in this instance, is well justified.) • If you are not prepared to work longer hours than almost anyone you know, despite the jibes of colleagues and friends, you are unlikely to get rich. • If you cannot convince yourself that you are “good enough” to be rich, you will never get rich. • If you cannot treat your quest to get rich as a game, you will never be rich. • If you cannot face up to your fear of failure, you will never be rich.

The truth is that getting rich means sacrifice.

After a lifetime of making money and observing better men and women than I fall by the wayside, I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth. Trust me on this.

Working for others is a reconnaissance expedition; a means and not an end in itself. It is an apprenticeship and not a goal.

New or rapidly developing industries, whether glamorous or not, very often provide more opportunities to get rich than established sectors. The three reasons for this are availability of risk capital, ignorance and the power of a rising tide.

To get rich, you will need capital, and to acquire capital you need to be where loose capital is searching for a home.

If you are quick at grasping concepts and jargon, you become an “instant expert.” The owners of capital love “experts.”

The biggest rewards go not to those individuals who came up with the idea, nor to those individuals who built the empire. They go to those entities or individuals who funded the enterprise and own the most stock. Always bear this in mind during the Search.

“Luck is preparation multiplied by opportunity.” — SENECA, ROMAN PHILOSOPHER “The harder I practiced, the luckier I got.” — GARY PLAYER, GOLF CHAMPION “Luck is a dividend of sweat.” —RAY KROC, MCDONALD’S FOUNDER

All around us, every day, opportunities to get rich are popping up. The more alert you are, the more chance you have of spotting them. The more preparation you have done, the more chance you have of succeeding. The more bold you are, the better chance you have of getting in on the ground floor and confounding the odds. The more self-belief you can muster, the more certain will be your aim and your timing. And the less you care what the neighbors think, the more likely you are to take the plunge and exploit an opportunity.

Chances come to everyone in life, in all shapes and sizes, often disguised, and more often radiating risk and potential humiliation. Those who are prepared to analyze the risk, to bear the humiliation and to act in deadly earnest—these are the “lucky” ones who will find themselves, when the music stops, holding a potful of money.

You cannot patent an idea. You can only patent your own method for implementing an idea. It is for this reason that so many people have become rich despite never having had a single great idea in their lives. As it happens, I count myself among them.

Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Specially adapted sneakers may be a good idea. But the goal is still to win, and sports shoes don’t win. Athletes do.

There is another side to the subject of ideas in commerce. Stealing them. Or to put it more pleasantly, emulating them. The error of failing to emulate a winning idea pervades every industry at all levels.

Why people should be loath to emulate success is a matter for psychologists.

you want to be rich, then watch your rivals closely and never be ashamed to emulate a winning strategy.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. Seek them out and make them work. They do not have to be your ideas. Execution is all in this regard.

If, on the other hand, you spend your days thinking up and developing in your mind this great idea or that, you are unlikely to get rich.

Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

Thinking big. That’s the secret.

“Success is never permanent; failure is never fatal. The only thing that really counts is to never, never, never give up.”

If staff see you indulging in long lunch hours and purchasing yourself a fancy company car, then they are either going to resent it or they are going to emulate you.

Think big, act small. It’s a recipe that never goes out of style.

A successful and naturally modest entrepreneur is an object of reverence and respect in the business world.

If you are determined to be rich, there is only one talent you require. Can you think what it is before your eyes skim down to the next paragraph? Right. You need the talent to identify, hire and nurture others with talent.

“There is no substitute for talent.

Money is not always the great motivator here. Talented people want a good salary, of course, but surprisingly often they are more attracted to new opportunities and challenges.

When you come across real talent, it is sometimes worth allowing them to create the structure in which they choose to labor. In nine cases out of ten, by inviting them to take responsibility and control for a new venture, you will motivate them to do great things.

You must identify talent. Then you must move heaven and earth to hire it. You must nurture it, reward it properly and protect it from being poached.

Just remember the simple rules concerning talent: identify it, hire it, nurture it, reward it, protect it. And, when the time comes, fire it. If you can do all these things with talent in the context of building your own company, I would be truly astonished if you did not become rich. Because the truth is, talent does most of the work for you. Just as it has done since the beginning of recorded history. After all, who built the pyramids? The pharaohs or the engineers? Think about it. Then go hire some talent—just like they did.