How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets Paperback – 26 May 2009

Over the last 20th some years of reading many books, manly autobiographies, better still biographies, and also various forms of psychology etc, every so often I come across a gem of a book. How to Get Rich is one of them for me.One of the tests of a good biographer in my opinion is that when you finish the book you feel like you was one of your best friends, and this book did that for me.Although of course in this case the book is focusing on Felix's business endeavours rather than his personal life, but it's written in a very UN stuffy straight from the hip way with great insight to the mentality to the feelings and desires of the author.Felix points out that quite simply most "get rich quick" books are written by people who are not rich themselves! But are just trying to get their by selling their books full of psychology babble.In this case the book is written by the "Real McCoy" a rich guy starting from nothing.He's not trying to promise that you will get rich with false hope, in fact quite the contrary at the very beginning he points out of the VERY few people ever get in the super rich bracket.What also makes the journey through the book really enjoyable is the wicked wit and sense of humour of Felix with little bursts of insightful poetry.Myself a businessman of 24 years with a company which installs CCTV and Security Equipment but I'm in a much smaller pond to Felix, but id feel his book will help me, and if I don't achieve the goal of the title, at least it might hoist me a few rungs, and if not it was a great read anyway !And just in the process of reading How to Get Rich for the second time, don't miss this one!!And if you ever read this little review Felix, I love to take on new challenges. I run a few secondary business/ fun projects. No point in waiting until some day to enjoy life when I am super rich you Felix you have already pointed out how unlikely my chances are, So I might as well get and enjoy it anyway as a combatable poor ! Example I am Sir Roger Moore's web manager(the 007 actor and more importantly a UNICEF Ambassador) who answers six questions per month from his fans, which I choose.So how about opening a (Felix) forum to the world's public to discuss not only your books, poetry etc but to ask interesting questions from the business jungle? I'm sure it would be fun and productive. If you're interested please contact me I would love to run it. Alan Davidson

This is a great book for magazine publishers and very interesting for budding and mature entrepreneurs in any business. Only that breed will truly understand a lot of what it contains as the book has some quite deep messages which the author has tried to simplify.The second half of the book much better than first half. There's a bit of waffle to get through (but not too much) to get to the interesting bits - but once you do it is excellent stuff and hard to put down. To get the most out of this book you have to believe in its author but it contains a few important contradictions of itself. One of the author's main pieces of advice to an entrepreneur is to keep hold of 100 per cent of the equity of an enterprise. But page 60/61 is about licensing of magazine titles and extolling its virtue. But licensing a magazine title is the ultimate surrender of equity -and the passage goes against much of what the author says about surrendering equity. Especially as not surrendering equity is the key piece of advice in the whole book and the author gives example after example of why - all of which are hard to argue with. But there lies the paradox of `How to Get Rich' in that the central advice has been ignored by its author consistently and by ignoring his own advice he has made most of his money. He made two thirds of his fortune working and sharing equity with his partners Peter and Bob in America. The true moral of his tale appears to be if you get the right partners then sharing equity is the real way to make serious money as the author demonstrated so well in the United States. It would have been nice to have the author explain that paradox in the book, but, strangely, he appears not to see it.There are a few daft pages notably those that lay into Steve Jobs, which, valid as the criticism is, don't fit the book as Jobs for all his mistakes is nine times richer than the author and seven years younger. The passage on Jobs would have been better put as an observation, rather than a criticism.Page 105 is also pretty daft when the author suggests that replacing Pete Best with Ringo Starr in The Beatles, all those years ago, was almost unnecessary. The author seemingly fails to recognise that The Beatles became the world's most successful group of musicians because all four members were geniuses and their manager, Brian Epstein's genius was to assemble the four geniuses. The observation, whether it was necessary for Epstein to do this, flies against other advice from the author to hire as many talented people as you can. Many people would say sacking Pete Best was the reason The Beatles became what they did. The author endorses Brian Epstein's quest to select the most talented people and then seems to ask "did it matter?" Odd.Especially as what come across very clearly in the book is that the author's greatest talent is to select other talented people to work for him. But the author does not seem to realise that it is his greatest talent, notably described on Pages 180/213 and other places. Both he and Richard Branson have that instant ability and arguably the most important talent for an entrepreneur to have. But it is underplayed in this book.Having said all that it is impossible to be too critical as the book is full of gems of extremely astute advice and observation. Particularly when he tells the moral tale of two publishing executives, he admits more talented than him, who made only one per cent of his fortune. The author describes exactly and precisely why that was.But the book is full of that sort of sage observation and is truly brilliant in places: Page 23 is a great analysis of why people who have got loads of money are driven to make more and it is the first time I have ever seen it rationalised. On Page 73 is a great bit of business wisdom which is a simple as it is obvious and is great pure practical advice. Page 241 is excellent analysis, as is Page 250. Page 265- 271 is also wonderful advice although I am not sure that advice in the last paragraph of Page 265 should have been given so unequivocally.In summary this is a book every entrepreneur, budding and mature, should read. It is a great work as one might expect from a man who has done it himself. As the author so sagely and frequently points out, almost all of the other self-help book authors have no basis for the advice they give. Any riches, most of them have accumulated, have been made by writing the books themselves. Its all too true and the reason why this book is a rarity of purity.

Great book on wealth and poems. Felix Dennis poems caught my attention right away. I enjoyed reading them multiple of times. I also enjoyed the simple language he used with animal characters and stories.I nominated this book 4 stars because I was looking for more knowledge into investment world and secrets coming from Felix Dennis.