How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis

Author:Felix Dennis
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US

The Nature of Albert’s Misfortune

Is luck just “a dividend of sweat”? How many times can one person “dust themselves down, pick themselves up and start all over again” before they lose heart? I have already mentioned Winston Churchill’s “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” All very well if you are a cigar-smoking, aging hero at the nadir of his career, who is nevertheless certain he is destined for greatness. But what about the rest of us?

The only truth about luck, good or bad, is that it will change. The law of averages virtually guarantees it. And here, I think, is one difference that separates me from my “unlucky” friend, whom I shall call Albert.

Albert is so close to the cross currents of the market that his antennae lead him astray. When he hits yet another bump on the road, or has a head-on collision, he attempts to change his luck by changing direction. It’s not that he lacks stamina. Albert has tons of energy and stamina. But he doesn’t, as Churchill put it, “keep going.” Instead, he keeps looking for pastures new—the golden sunlit uplands, the philosopher Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds.” Perhaps there, in a new place, he will find his fortune and change his luck?

Instead, he immediately encounters the evils of an unfamiliar and perilous country, without the benefit of the road maps he so painstakingly put together in his last adventure. He does not “Keep on truckin’ ” as the cartoonist, Robert Crumb, would have it.

This “flight not fight” behavioral trait is the sign of a prey animal, not a predator. Despite what you will read in many self-improvement tomes, “partnering” and “symbiotic evolution” are no way to get rich. They may be a way to a better world. They may make you a happier person and a better manager. But they will not make you rich— except, perhaps, in spirit.

To become rich you must behave as a predator. I will go further, you must become a predator. Albert is not a predator.

By moving so adroitly and so swiftly from one thing to the next, Albert does not place himself in the way of luck. He does not draw luck to him. He does not make his own luck. He is much too much in love with the green, green grass just over the next hill.

Then again, Albert is more intelligent than I am. He had a grand education and read all the right books at university. He is not a self-taught scholar, as I am. But there is a downside to all this intelligence and imagination. He thinks a little too much before he acts. He weighs the options too carefully. He is capable of imagining defeat.

So while he is clever enough to want to minimize his risk by switching to yet another new and uncontested marketplace, he leads himself into uncertainty. And into error.

Uncontested markets are usually uncontested for a reason. Nature abhors a vacuum and if no one else is contesting a market, it may well be that no such market exists.

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