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P.T. Barnum built an empire on fraud.
The 19th-century showbiz impresario, whose 200th birthday is today, exhibited the tail end of a fish stitched to the body of a monkey, calling it the “Feejee Mermaid.”
It was a smash.
He saw a competitor’s phony “Cardiff Giant,” supposedly excavated after millennia underground in upstate New York, then faked his own after his rival refused to sell the original.
When Barnum unveiled his latest hoax, often a series of ads and bogus lawsuits would appear, questioning its legitimacy. Controversy! And it sold.
Barnum, of course, planted the items himself, fraudulently calling fraud a fraud.
So what might nose-to-the-grindstone workers learn from such a devious man?

Plenty.
You’ll find it in “The Art of Money Getting, or Golden Rules for Making Money,” an essay in which Barnum outlined 20 principles for success in work and business. Mine them and you’ll find that, either directly or obliquely, he anticipates advice from modern self-help authors including Harvey Mackay (self-made men are easy sells), Po Bronson (success doesn’t equal wealth) and Jim Collins (follow your passion), along with bits of every career how-to tome you can shake a stick at.

And “The Art of Money Getting” has something going for it that the vast majority of self-help tomes don’t: Its author had tremendous success in something other than writing self-help.

It’s also free — a mere Google search away. So let’s celebrate the birthday of an iconic American entrepreneur by visiting some of his nuggets of wisdom:

* Anticipating modern neurological science, Barnum tells us not to dilute our attentions: “When a man’s undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once.”

Translation: Don’t multitask.

* Goldman Sachs exec Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre would have benefited from heeding this Barnum decree, written long before an errant e-mail could get you fired: “Business men must write letters, but they should be careful what they put in them . . . Say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your expectations, your intentions.”

* Barnum understood the need to have a system, long before books peddling various methods for moving up cluttered the shelves.

“A person who does business by rule, having a time and place for everything, doing his work promptly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and slipshod.”

* A master of the psychology of money, Barnum writes that any knucklehead can earn a reasonable living. The problem is outflow. So like modern-day finance guru Dave Ramsey, Barnum counsels cultivating a near-pathological fear of debt.

“Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master,” Barnum writes, as if seeing the recent housing meltdown in a crystal ball. “When you have it mastering you, when interest is constantly piling up against you, it will keep you down in the worst kind of slavery.”

* Though Barnum made (and lost) fortunes, he also understood there was more to life than money: “There are many rich poor men, while there are many others . . . who have never possessed so much money as some rich persons squander in a week, but who are nevertheless really richer and happier than any man can ever be.”

* As if envisioning the train wreck that is an “American Idol” audition, P.T. says to stick with what you’re good at: “Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.”

* Another thing Barnum understood was the limits of what self-help advice can accomplish. Instead of telling readers they were a cinch to become rich, he allows that most folks don’t have his stomach for risk-taking or his genius for marketing.

“That we are born ‘free and equal’ is a glorious truth in one sense,” he writes, “yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be.”
Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Guest
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Re: PT Barnum 200th Bday 7/5&Art of Money Getting
September 17, 2010, 02:50:56 AM
He´s the godfather of all hoaxes! It was fun to read his book - considering that it was written more than a hundred years ago, it´s remarkable how it hasn´t lost anything of its entertainment value. I highly recommend it. Good post, starlight30 - thank you!  :D
Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Guest
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