Andrew Wilkinson Profile picture
Jan 27, 2021 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
There is one book I recommend more than any other, and I'm ashamed to share the name...

I swear to god, this is an incredible, well-written, thoughtful book.

It's called 'How To Get Rich' 🤦‍♂️

It was written by a magazine publishing magnate named Felix Dennis in 2008... Image
Ignore the title. Seriously. It's great.

He is a character. In the 90's he blew $100MM+ on alcohol and crack cocaine, then become a full-time poet in the early 2000's.

It encompasses most of the important lessons of starting and operating a large business.

Here's a few bits: Image
Fish where the fish are:

“If you wish to become rich, look carefully about you at the prevailing industries where wealth appears to be gravitating. THEN GO TO WHERE THE MONEY IS!”
Hire smart people and leave them to it:

“When you come across real talent, it is worth allowing them to create the structure. In nine cases out of ten, by inviting them to take responsibility and control for a new venture, you will motivate them to do great things.”
Delegate:

“If you want to get rich, then learn to delegate. Don’t learn to pretend to delegate. Delegation is not only a powerful tool, it is the only way to maximise and truly incentivise your most precious asset – the people who work for you."
Fight to hire the best:

“Stupid people are easy to hire.”
Ideas > Execution:

“If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. Seek them out and make them work. They do not have to be your ideas. Execution is all in this regard.”
Retain ownership:

"Every single percentage point of anything you own is crucial. It is worth fighting for, tooth and claw. It is worth shouting and banging on the table for. It is worth begging for and grovelling for.”
Money ≠ Happiness:

“Happiness? Don't make me laugh. The rich are not happy. I have yet to meet a really rich happy man or woman—and I have met many rich people. The demands from others to share their wealth become so tiresome, that they nearly always insulate themselves."
I first read this back in 2008 and have read it annually since then.

In reality, while it is about how to get rich, it's REALLY about why you probably don't want to get rich and the myriad ways it messed up his life.

Really great. Worth a read: amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-F…
*Execution > Ideas

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More from @awilkinson

Mar 28, 2023
Every once in a while someone launches a business and I think "fuck, why didn't I do this first?"

Sam just launched what I think will be one of the most quietly successful, profitable, and simple businesses in the world.

Here's why I'm jealous:
✅ Perfect audience alignment (successful entrepreneurs)

✅ Relatively simple to operate

✅ High switching costs (once you're in with and trust a group, you aren't going anywhere)

✅ Huge CLTV ($10,000+/year)
✅ Recurring revenue

✅ Can build tons of other revenue lines (events, directory, apps, Coworking, etc) over time
Read 4 tweets
Mar 4, 2023
Here's a big list of incredible Charlie Munger quotes from Buffett's annual letter.

"The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor."
"If you don't see the world the way it is, it's like judging something through a distorted lens."

"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. And a related thought: Early on, write your desired obituary – and then behave accordingly."
"If you don't care whether you are rational or not, you won't work on it. Then you will stay irrational and get lousy results."

"Patience can be learned. Having a long attention span and the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time is a huge advantage."
Read 9 tweets
Mar 3, 2023
It's tempting to panic about the impending AI revolution.

It will undoubtedly cause a massive amount of disruption.

But it's interesting to think about some of the industries that *should* have been disrupted by existing technology but haven't been...
For example, today, anyone can go on Wealthfront or WealthSimple and get every feature (and more) of a stock broker or "wealth manager."

Any investor with a brain, realizes that typically a wealth manager is just a very good sales person who knows very little about investing...
They build a "balanced portfolio" and "diversify" you, by....

Buying a bunch of ETFs and mutual funds.

This is precisely what Wealthfront and others offer.

Wealth managers charge 1-2%.

Wealthfront charges 0.25%

Let's imagine they manage $1 million for you...
Read 18 tweets
Feb 18, 2023
Companies are just groups of people.

So your company will not grow without the right group of people.

The problem is, if you haven't experienced the next level of scale before, you don't *know* what those people look like.

Inevitably you hire bozos...
...or worse, try to do it yourself badly.

You read a bunch of books about how to scale and manage a bigger company.

But lets be real:

It doesn't matter how smart you are, if you try to do anything for the first time, it usually sucks.
I see so many founders and CEOs make this mistake.

They grow like crazy, then plateau because of bad hires or because they won't hire people who have done it before.

I'm no better—I messed this up for 10+ years.

My approach is extremely simple...
Read 9 tweets
Feb 2, 2023
Something I've learned over and over again:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

If you give someone a chance to do something that is a big swing/has low probability of success, then you need to be 100% ready to have them hate your guts with a passion....
This is counter to what we want to believe.

We want to believe that people will respect us for taking a chance on them.

For seeing an opportunity. For doing something unique.

But the world doesn't usually reward that, it punishes.
People don't like to fail.

It's deeply uncomfortable.

So they craft narratives about why mistakes were made....

But not by them.

Often you become the target of that.

It would have worked if only you hadn't "X, Y, Z".
Read 14 tweets
Jan 11, 2023
Two years ago, my friend @MohnishPabrai (who taught me almost everything I know about investing) mentioned something bizarre:

He had hired a psychologist to deep dive on his life and rip it to shreds.

This guy interviewed his wife.
His co-workers.
And him, for hours and hours.
He said it profoundly changed his life.

So, I hired this guy, Dr. Jack Skeen.

He spoke with my closest friends, my wife, my co-workers, and we spent hours on the phone together.

He'd ask me weird uncomfortable questions like:

"Are you a good person?"
and

"What is your purpose?"

and

"Are you well liked?"

With long, awkward silences on the other end of the line to make me squirm, while he took notes.

I also did a series of multiple choice personality tests...
Read 16 tweets

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