The Art of Money Getting or Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum (1880)
gutenberg.org
gutenberg.org
Most of these major takeaways are grounded in the core idea of knowledge is power and patience is a virtue. But because it is said by someone with less integrity and known for larger hoaxes than say Benjamin Franklin or Charlie Munger, you may have a harder time believing it.
Don't get me wrong, they most likely put a lot of work in and most likely did a lot of things right but deep understanding of it is not necessary for success.
But as you already like the thing it doesn't feel like you put the work, it was just "the fun stuff I liked to do happened to be profitable", even if it required just as much work as anything else
Yep, a lot of this. But also a lot of getting dragged kicking and screaming into situations that turned out to be really great.
Blind luck: You're walking and find money on the ground.
Luck of activity: You go walking a lot, if there's money on the ground you're likely to walk by it.
Luck of optimism: You know you're lucky, so you're always looking for confirming evidence. If you walk by money you're likely to notice.
Luck of eccentricity: You don't walk along the same paths as other people. If there's money on the ground, you're likely going to be the first to walk by it.
Was all poor artists who died in poverty successful in the past ?
That's it. If you set out on doing something you would be proud of if you did and then achieve it, you are successful.
IMHO: Wrong. "People that win the super bowl didn't just show up. It was intentional."
Basically, through evolution, our ability to 'Reason' is basically to provide excuses for things that sound plausible or are beneficial to us, it came about as we began to communicate, we needed to explain our actions.
When viewed through this lens, it makes a lot of sense that this is basically all that is happening here and perhaps all that is ever happening, the problem then becomes that we don't realise this and our logical thinking becomes an exercise of reading other peoples 'excuses'.
People explaining things, is just people giving reasons for them, but it is a reason that sounds plausible after the fact it happened and not necessary why it actually happened in the first place.
But for others, it’s the same stuff that great entrepreneurs always say…
- luck: having a great team with the right skills
- luck: being in the right place at the right time
- resources/luck: having enough capital to realize an opportunity
- focus/discipline: being able to focus on 1-2 things and disciplined enough not to pick up other items
- moral fortitude: it’s hard to be successful in business long-term while being a full-time crook
Good copywriters and salesmen can make money from nothing.
Now, why has this guide stayed popular despite apparently having "little value?" Probably because it actually does, just perhaps not in the precise way one believes they need right now.
Edit:
I was curious about this and it looks like he wrote this after he'd fallen on hard times.
Funny that it was even happening back then!
Golden Rules for Making Money (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483313 - March 2019 (191 comments)
Golden Rules for Making Money (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11320169 - March 2016 (180 comments)
Golden Rules for Making Money by P. T. Barnum (1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056 - Sept 2008 (56 comments)
Art of Money Getting, by P. T. Barnum (actual book, 1880) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88544 - Dec 2007 (12 comments)
The reason for listing old related threads is just that many readers find them interesting.
I do disagree with the bit about accepting rude customers. I will happily forfeit business of a rude customer. This is especially true if your employees are high value and you don’t want them subject to abuse (feel valued), and I hypothesise that in fact genuinely rude customers aren’t as listened to by friends as they think in their own mind.
Well, in the context of the submitted text, the matter seems different: the section «Be Polite and Kind to Your Customers» expresses a different direction in that very title, and the anecdotal example is about "an usher that «intended to whip a man», «“Because he said I was no gentleman”»" - which (also) heavily suggests that the writer may have omitted some details about "what actually happened".
So, about «accepting [which] customers», well do your Cost/Risk/Benefit calculations; about behaviour, good sense be the ground and in case of controversy add more of the same.
The only effective method for dealing with them (based on working in retail and PC repair for 5 years) is to gray rock them, be as unhelpful as possible and disengage the situation, and hope the next time you deal with them that they're more reasonable.
Which is - to my understanding of what it could mean - one the most disrespectful behaviours possible. And disrespect to that level could lead to violence, depending on the culture of the interlocutor. Even more than earlier, further recommendation to throw checks and good sense is suggested - cooling down the situation and remaining fixed in lucid reasoning (which includes, remaining respectful - which excludes, showing you are ignoring the interlocutor).
Edit: I will rephrase, for even more clarity: if somebody were irritated, and the listener started playing uninterested and distracted - well that amounts not to the "small terms" of just putting fuel to a fire, but carpeting napalm.
"He began his career as a showman in 1835 when he was 25 with the purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralyzed slave woman named Joice Heth, whom an acquaintance was trumpeting around Philadelphia as George Washington's former nurse and 161 years old. Slavery was already outlawed in New York, but he exploited a loophole which allowed him to lease her for a year for $1,000, borrowing $500 to complete the sale. Heth died in February 1836, at no more than 80 years old. Barnum had worked her for 10 to 12 hours a day, and he hosted a live autopsy of her body in a New York saloon where spectators paid 50 cents to see the dead woman cut up, as he revealed that she was likely half her purported age"
To boldly go where no man has gone before, into forms of exploitation unthinkable to others.
It is a bit different. They started it, they started it all. The Project started in 1971, when Michael S. Hart as a student was offered computer use and realized it was a good idea to digitize texts, for preservation and distribution.
Project Gutenberg is one of the foremost Cultural Preservation and Promotion Projects of the XX Century.
At 45, Barnum destroyed a true engineer-entrepreneur. In an era where clocks were essential for organizing commerce as the country grew, Chauncey Jerome revolutionized clockmaking by using stamped-out brass gears - both cheaper and more reliable, among the first shifts from craft to manufacturing. Then Barnum suckered Jerome into a venture that destroyed all the wealth and business Jerome had accumulated.
But we don't directly have that kind of impact... crypto, brick-and-mortar businesses, journalism if not democracy, the rise of successful surveillance states, the ubiquity of software rented instead of bought coupled with complete absence of warranty, digital services coupled to force arbitration clauses...
If you dig around the web youll find out that it's because one of their books infringes on the rights of some publisher.
The book and the publisher are unknown to me, but they succeded in getting the site blacklisted, all of it. The optics of the whole thing are horrendous imho
To make money, sell something valuable to others.
To get rich, first you have to define "rich" - most people's definition is attainable purely by the thing above, over a long enough period of time.
For large enough definitions of "rich", or if you want to get rich "quick", you have one of two ways: get a lot of money from a small number of people, or a little money from a large number of people.
Each requires different talents, a tremendous amount of luck, and ultimately a willingness to lie, cheat, and steal to hold on to the ladder as you climb.
It's certainly something we as a society should dissuade. The more people we have in mode A - sell something valuable, get modestly wealthy over a long period of time - the better off we are.
I think I'll read this, considering others' praise, but I find it funny that the abstract introduces the "expert" at getting rich as someone who did it by accident: doesn't that imply that he didn't know how to do it?
I bought the book expecting practical advice (I was young and had no love for myself), but was surprised by a rather poignant read. It's been a long time, though. I remember mostly the part about hookers and drugs ruining his health.
As a sibling comment already implied, the core message of the book is that the price of getting rich is often not worth it. I personally also enjoy the "Rich but not famous" essay by Tim Ferriss at https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/ which has a lot of vivid descriptions of the downsides of fame.