Transcript
Introduction
"In 1972, I persuaded a jolly young lawyer I had met to do an act for me. I had no money to pay him, but perhaps my chutzpah amused him. He helped me to register my GBP 100 limited liability company and provided me with at least a fig leaf of respectability. I think I paid him GBP 20 for his services. The company was called H. Bunch Associates, and I intended to publish a series of comic books.
Next, I persuaded a close friend, Dick, to join me as Co-Director and Production Manager. There wasn't much in the way of a salary. We liberated, meaning stole, a few sticks of office furniture, 2 electric typewriters, and a floor camera from the offices of OZ Magazine, where Dick and I had met. Another friend, Lemmy, from the metal band Motorhead, mentioned that an acquaintance of his was vacating a garret in the West End, perhaps we could move in there? Lemmy used to occasionally sleep under the OZ Design table while recovering from excessive ingestion of alcohol and other substances.
Lemmy was right about the empty flat, 3 rooms at the top of the most rickety stairs I had ever climbed. The building had been badly damaged in the blitz and never properly rebuilt. The last tenants had been breeding puppies in there. It took a long time to get rid of the stink of puppy s***. Next, a close friend designed some smart-headed notepaper for us free of charge, suspecting rightly that we might be able to provide him with work if our venture succeeded. A small printer I'd come to know while working for OZ magazine agreed to print this notepaper, knowing full well, I could not pay him for it right then. A semi-friendly amused bank manager at Barclays Bank opened an account for the company into which I deposited the mighty sum of GBP 50. A magazine distributor, with whom OZ had done business, agreed to distribute my product, although I had nothing to show them.
Somehow I had to persuade a printer to provide machine time and paper to produce the comic we were busy preparing in the garret. The bill would come to a few thousand pounds. I had written a great many record reviews when I worked for OZ. The record companies would send albums directly to my flat in the hope of soliciting a review and they never asked for the LPs back. I sorted out all the albums I could bear to part with and sold them to a local record shop. This brought in just sufficient funds to at least get a few printers to talk with me while Dick and I lived on GBP 10 a week. But unless I could guarantee that the printers got paid, not one of them, very sensibly, would budge.
Then I had an idea. I ask the owners of my potential distributors for the comic to write to a particular printer, promising that he would be the first to receive money when the comic came out. They made it sound, as a matter of common sense, that at least enough money was likely to be generated by the sales of the comic to pay the printer and paper bill. And they stressed that their client, my little company, would only receive any money when and if the printer had been paid in full.
This was the key. Business must have been slow because the printer agreed. I secretly suspect that he did so as much to keep me from constantly badgering him as anything else. Persistence is a powerful tool in the hands of a hungry, young hustler on the make. Thus, it was that the first issue of Cozmic Comics was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. It barely made a cent, but it provided the framework for yet more publishing ventures. Within 2 years, I had GBP 60,000 in the bank. That is the equivalent of GBP 0.5 million today.
The printers were paid, the contributors were paid. The designers were paid. The landlord was paid. Even Dick and I were paid. Above all, I retained control of the company, a company I still own 100% of 35 years later. Some will argue that what I did back in 1972 could not be emulated today. But human nature does not change and, at bottom, we are cooperative animals. Many people are indulgent toward the young. After all, we were all once young ourselves. Those who wish to start a company and get rich cannot expect a free ride, but they might be surprised at the number of people in their particular pond willing to help them to some degree or another."
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is How to Get Rich. One of the world's greatest entrepreneurs shares his secret and it was written by Felix Dennis. So this book is actually one of the most requested books by listeners for me to cover for the podcast. And I was actually hesitant to read it because of the title. The title just seems so cringing, how to get rich.