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The Conference Board Review® Article
Felix Dennis Has Way More Money Than You
— and there’s a reason for that.
By Vadim Liberman
Felix Dennis is rich. Not just "rich" (up to $200 million), or even "seriously rich" (up to $400 million), but with a net worth of as much as $900 million, he is perhaps "filthy rich." So why would someone only $100 million shy of billionaire status spend his precious time penning How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets (Portfolio)? "Because I enjoy writing about something I feel I know about," says the chairman of Dennis Publishing, a magazine empire that includes Maxim, Stuff, Computer Shopper, and The Week (with which TCB Review has a marketing relationship). Despite his book's title, though, he insists that he is not some "weasel with blow-dried hair" spewing self-help tips on how you, yes you, can become rich by following twelve easy steps. Dennis, 60, spoke from England with TCB Review associate editor Vadim Liberman about money and why most corporate executives — that's right, you — will never have much of it anyway.
You claim that money doesn't buy happiness. Why does it seem as though only rich people like you ever say that?
Because you have to be rich to discover that. If you define happiness as contentment, then too much of anything is highly unlikely to make you happy. In fact, becoming rich is almost certain to impose the opposite of happiness — if not from the stresses and strains of protecting wealth, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival. The rich are not happy. I have yet to meet a single really rich happy man or woman — and I have met many rich people. The demands from others to share their wealth become so tiresome and so insistent that they nearly always decide they must insulate themselves. Insulation breeds paranoia and arrogance and loneliness — and rage that they have only so many years left to enjoy rolling in the sand they have piled up. The only people the self-made rich can trust are those who knew them before they became wealthy. For many newly rich people, the world becomes a smaller, less generous, and darker place.
So besides all that gloom, along with a private jet to reach homes on multiple continents, what does money buy?
Respect, but only of a certain kind. Having too much money doesn't gain you the respect that accompanies other professions, like doctors or teachers. And it shouldn't. But money does buy a kind of professional respect from others in your area of business.
Don't power and money go together too?
Money is power, but does power lead to money? How rich is Jimmy Carter? As president, he could have literally plunged the world into Armageddon, but is he a triple billionaire? I doubt it. So while all money is power, many types of power come with very little money. A person who runs a college with a fantastic reputation has the power to turn away applicants who have parents with huge sums of money and who will do anything to get their child into that college. "No, your child is not clever enough to study here. Get lost!" That's power!
Comments? Write a letter to the editor.
Return to the July/August 2008 The Conference Board Review® issue.
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