The get rich genre has produced more empty calories than a vending machine diet. These books tend to promise golden stairways to freedom built out of vision boards, positive affirmations, and the vague suggestion that you too can be a billionaire if you just wake up earlier.
Felix Dennis’s How to Get Rich is the antidote to that syrupy nonsense—a brutally funny, blisteringly honest confessional written by a man who didn’t just make obscene amounts of money, but also understood exactly what it cost him. It reads less like a self-help book and more like a pub rant delivered by a slightly drunk oracle who’s tired of your excuses.
Dennis, the late publisher behind Maxim and a host of wildly profitable media ventures, demolishes every romantic myth about wealth. He doesn’t preach hustle culture or cosmic manifestation. He tells you plainly: getting rich is miserable work, fueled by obsession, audacity, and relentless execution. It’s a game for those willing to sacrifice almost everything else—and he seems half-apologetic for being so good at it.
The poem that opens the book, How to Get Rich, captures his worldview in rhyme and rhythm; a kind of entrepreneur’s nursery rhyme written by someone who’s seen the whole circus from backstage.
How to Get Rich
Good fortune? The fact is
The more that you practice,
The harder you sweat,
The luckier you get.Ideas? We’ve had ’em
Since Eve deceived Adam,
But take it from me
Execution’s the key.The money? Just pester
a likely investor.
To get what you need
You toady to greed.The talent? Go sign it.
But first, wine and dine it.
It’s tedious work
With a talented jerk.Good timing? To win it
You gotta be in it.
Just never be late
To quit or cut bait.Expansion? It’s vanity!
Profit is sanity.
Overhead begs
To walk on two legs.The first step? Just do it
And bluff your way through it.
Remember to duck!
Godspeed…and Good Luck!
It’s all here… the absurdity, the grind, the gallows humor of real entrepreneurship. Dennis’s poem mocks the hollow simplicity of inspirational business advice, reducing it to rhyming couplets that are both witty and piercingly true. He reminds us that ideas are cheap; they’ve been around since Adam and Eve. What matters is the slog of turning one into a business; wining, dining, begging, bluffing, and sweating until something finally sticks.
Unlike the faux sages who speak of manifesting abundance, Dennis admits that much of success depends on discomfort and compromise. He calls out the tedious human politics of dealing with talented jerks, the endless groveling to investors, and the danger of expansion as an ego trip. His philosophy of profit is sanity should be printed on the desk of every startup founder who mistakes burn rate for brilliance.
What makes How to Get Rich so different from its genre cousins is Dennis himself. He’s not selling a formula or a course; he’s unspooling a confession. The book feels like sitting across from a man who made millions and now wishes he could tell you what it really did to him. His prose is sardonic, sometimes brutal, but consistently self-aware. He doesn’t just describe how to win—he shows the collateral damage. He warns that wealth amplifies loneliness, tempts moral decay, and doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. Yet he also can’t deny the thrill of it all.
In mocking the get rich genre, Dennis achieves what few authors dare: he tells the truth without dressing it up. His lessons aren’t about branding, networking, or mindset—they’re about doing. As he writes, execution is the key. The world is full of people with ideas, but it rewards only the few who act on them with reckless persistence.
So if you’re tired of books that tell you to dream big and visualize a yacht, How to Get Rich is your antidote. It’s the rare how-to guide that both laughs at the absurdity of its own title and manages to tell you something real about ambition, greed, and human nature. It’s not motivational—it’s medicinal. Felix Dennis doesn’t promise to make you rich. He just shows you what it actually looks like—and dares you to still want it.
Buy How to Get Rich: One of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
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