Director magazine and Felix Dennis on getting rich

Had to chuckle. Felix Dennis who was once my boss and who is now proprietor of Maxim, among many other titles, appears on the cover of this month's Director magazine. The coverline reads "Still loaded". The magazine just had to know that loaded magazine is 'the enemy' as far as Dennis is concerned.

I joined Felix in 1979 to create a personal computer magazine. We were busy working away on it when he strolled in and said "I've bought Personal Computer World". All our ideas were quickly moved across and PCW was reborn.

After I resigned, a couple of years later, Felix sold the magazine to VNU. It was interesting to see that this didn't figure in the Director's timeline of Felix's achievements. He was, after all, pimping his book on How to Get Rich, and the VNU contribution must have been pretty pivotal.

Anyway, coming to the point, I rather enjoyed this paragraph from the article:

Companies, he says, should foster a spirit of entrepreneurialism, not team spirit. They should be “ruthless meritocracies”. Team spirit, he says, “is the glue that binds losers together."

Update 12 Sep '06: The Director magazine was misleading. I'm reading the book. See Felix's words in context.

Comments

[David Tebbutt]

Well, I won't name any names but this is a classic: we were working very late one evening trying to get the 'boards' ready to send to the printers. This meant last minute typesetting changes, cutting and pasting (literally) type and pictures.

With minutes to spare, we got all the boards into a bag, loaded them onto a motorcycle which roared off to Paddington station to catch the train.

We trooped back to the art room, utterly knackered, and the senior art person present saw a board that we'd overlooked.

He looked around, wild-eyed, and asked, "who can I blame?"

That's the sort of team spirit we had.

[Al]

But surely a team full of darwinian achievers, aka those lucky enough to survive in a ruthless meritocracy, still need to work together as a team with team spirit?

Namaste

Al

[David Tebbutt]

My favourite was when he met my son in the lift. (By an incredible coincidence his school had sent him to PC Pro on work experience.) Felix introduced himself and said "you can tell people you met the company chairman."

Daniel (typical) didn't breathe a word to Felix about me, the fact he'd met Felix as a child, or anything. Just shook hands with the man and stepped out of the lift.

[Ian Betteridge]

Heh! I think everyone who's ever worked for Felix has some kind of Felix-related war story. My own involves Felix, a designer who didn't know who he was, and the phrase "Art Wank Shit".

But I'm saving it for the inevitable unauthorised biography :)