Benjamin Franklin's The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation

by Steve Shipside

Overview

Since the first publication of "The Way to Wealth" in the 1750s millions of aspiring entrepreneurs have used Benjamin Franklin's advice to create and maintain profitable businesses. Many of its maxims and proverbs have become part of the fabric of western society: "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise...Nothing but money is sweeter than honey...If you would have your business done, go; if not, send...Creditors have better memories than debtors." Franklin died a hugely wealthy man and he is still listed in the Wealthy 100: The 100 Wealthiest Americans in History.Here Steve Shipside interprets Franklin's text for the modern day. Steve Shipside's interpretation is not a substitute for the original; its purpose is simply to illustrate the timeless nature of Franklin's insights by bringing them to life through modern personal finance case studies. This brilliant interpretation of "The Way to Wealth" is an entertaining accompaniment to one of the most famous books ever written.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781907755811
Publisher:	Infinite Ideas Ltd
Publication date:	09/26/2008
Series:	Infinite Success
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	695 KB

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Use it or lose it 2. Be the driver, not the drone 3. Play the time zone game 4. No pain, no gain 5. So are you feeling lucky? 6. Slugs, speedsters and dead sharks 7. Debt and despair 8. To thine own self be true 9. Conduct your own annual review 10. Don’t micromanage 11. The devil is in the detail 12. Keeping retail real 13. If you have to shop, shop smart 14. Death and taxes? 15. Many a mickle 16. Down, but not out 17. World wide timewaster 18. Invest in your number one asset: you 19. Eating the elephant 20. Do be do be do... 21. Be physically fit enough to earn a fortune 22. Quality time 23. Tackle those time thieves 24. Making the most of your working week 25. It’s not a good time 26. You snooze... You win! 27. The art of the tart; rate tart quick start 28. D-day 29. Know the score 30. Saving the day 31. Not saving but drowning 32. Don’t get bogged down in the bad times 33. Get help 34. DIY 35. Building your own brand 36. The kind of credit that doesn’t come with aprs 37. Don’t sell yourself short – get that rise 38. Work smarter, not harder 39. Beware of bargains 40. Look beyond the purchase price 41. Customer retention 42. Don’t get too cocky 43. Prepare for the worst 44. Make friends with a mentor 45. Go for it 46. Managing others 47. Think ahead 48. Don’t fall behind your business 49. Be ready to listen 50. Be careful out there 51. Don’t stop because you make it 52. Be realistic Index

Preface

Turning the pages of Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth is a bit like going into the attic of your parents’ house and sifting through all the old family belongings. There are so many aphorisms and bite-sized bits of homely wisdom that you begin to wonder if this was what your granny read before going to bed every night of her life. ‘Early to bed and early to rise...’, ‘no gains without pains’, ‘little strokes fell great oaks’, ‘God helps those that helps themselves’ – it’s as if every drop of sound and solemn common sense you ever heard had been distilled into the pages of one slim volume. As a true classic it’s also clear, on reflection, that this advice is as valid now as it was back in 1758 when the book was published. Creditors still make killings off unwary borrowers and working smarter, not harder, is still the way to business success. So why would you read a modern interpretation of an already stick-thin tract? Two reasons, really. The first is that, like everything else in the attic, The Way to Wealth has picked up a little bit of dust on the way. Groats and grindstones generally play little part in our daily lives these days. Similarly work tends to revolve around management, delivering services, knowledge work rather than ‘spinning and knitting... hewing and splitting’. Apologies if any senior hewing and splitting executives out there feel slighted by this. More importantly, Franklin was writing in an era when manual labour and the delivery of products rather than services were the primary activities. As such he doesn’t dwell much on knowledge management, outsourcing or even delegation. What is surprising, then, is how much of his homespun wisdom still applies to those fields (with a little extrapolation). But most of all the problem posed by The Way to Wealth is that it is, as Franklin himself puts it, a ‘harangue’. It’s told as a tale within a tale, with the advice within being delivered as a sermon by a fiercely anti-materialistic disciplinarian called Father Abraham. In the book the narrator is a writer called Richard Saunders who recognises that Abraham’s words are in fact his own advice (or as he acknowledges, the collected advice of generations) being read back to him. By making himself a character in the text, and having that character be lectured, Franklin makes it clear he is aware that so much good advice delivered in one chunk is like having your ear bent. By your grandparents. Which is never that comfortable and leaves me, for one, with the uneasy feeling that I’m being told how to invest money that I had previously earmarked for gobstoppers and sherbet dip dabs. That tone alone is enough to have modern adults quietly putting the book down after only a few lines. Which is a pity because Franklin reserves a little surprise at the end which explains why he has the advice delivered by the daunting Father Abraham rather than by himself. Despite being written as a harangue, The Way to Wealth is a very human book about very human strengths and weaknesses. If this modernisation helps keep alive even a small part of that homely wisdom in the context of today’s high- tech world then Franklin would have approved. Only he wouldn’t have put it that way, of course. He’d probably have nodded sagely and muttered something along the lines of ‘many a little makes a mickle’. And how right he’d have been.