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Comment by i_dont_know_ | Hacker News Reader

That PT Barnum... it's interesting because it really is a good read, and the whole way through you do feel like he's giving you some kind of good advice (so, if you had purchased it back in the day you don't feel ripped off), but at the same time it's not really practically actionable. You won't actually get closer to being like PT Barnum (even if you were reading it in the 1800s) or understand the steps to becoming like him, or necessarily become any better at making money. But at the same time, you're satisfied enough with the read to feel like you hadn't wasted your time and money on it. That's his real trick :)

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To be sure, most people who got successful don't really understand how they got there. Most of the time they think they do but then what really happens is they are rationalising and/or using circular logic.

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.

PT Barnum got where he got by being a good bullshitter. I think he was well aware of it, and I think he was smart enough not to put that in writing.

If you read the book he's very open about being a bullshitter!

I understand perfectly well how I achieved success: a little bit of work and a whole lot of luck, mainly in the form of being in the right place at the right time on more than one occasion. The problem is not that this is hard to understand, the problem is that it is hard to replicate, even for me.

I agree a lot with this - but I also think many underestimate their ability to recognize when they are in the right place at the right time and take an action, as little as it might be, in the right direction. Of course, the action being taken ending up being the right one may entail plenty of luck in and of itself.

It might be as simple as "whatever I was interested in as a kid happened to also make good money", which in itself is luck but also requires a bunch of work to action on it.

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

> whatever I was interested in as a kid happened to also make good money

Yep, a lot of this. But also a lot of getting dragged kicking and screaming into situations that turned out to be really great.

I love the theory about four types of luck.

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.

Can you define "success" ?

Was all poor artists who died in poverty successful in the past ?

Successful person is one that is able to achieve their goals that they deem worthy.

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.

Not that I disagree, but how can you be confident that this is the case? Have there been studies on this topic?

"To be sure, most people who got successful don't really understand how they got there."

IMHO: Wrong. "People that win the super bowl didn't just show up. It was intentional."

But lots of people who don't win the superbowl do all the same things.

Interestingly, I read that is why Reason exists anyway as per evolution, source for this is a book called The Enigma of reason.

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.

This is accurate for people without a long-term track record of success. One hit wonders.

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

This is similar advice on how to get wealthy as to what you would find in Poor Richard’s Almanack or more recently Poor Charlie’s Almanack.

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.

Sounds like a lot of tech and business blog posts when you put it like that.

LOL. Just imagine unleashing prime P.T Barnum on silicon valley. He'd "circle-back" and get some shit BOOTSTRAPPED.

There is no recipe to making money so what generally applicable advice can be given is more often what _not_ to do. I find this applies to most areas, from losing weight to romantic relationships. And judging by my anecdotal evidence of people who failed to make money I can find pretty much all the traps listed in there. Many, including me, would have avoided a lot of pain if they would have kept these rules in mind at all times.

The book is the lesson. If you read the book as a model, and write a book just like it, you will get money just like Barnum did. If you're a sucker, you follow the text. If you're shrewd, you understand the techniques of the text and learn to imitate them.

Good copywriters and salesmen can make money from nothing.

IIRC from when this book was mentioned earlier, probably on HN, he toured the US giving lectures about getting rich while he was broke.

It would be probably be very successful as a fake-rich influencer

far be it from PT Barnum to be overly scrupulous, but he seemed to have a problem with getting financially wiped out by fire and built a fortune three of four times over, so it's possible he could've done it twice by the time he did the lectures and just been broke at the moment. He might've been one of the most qualified people around to make a lecture about getting rich.

I couldn't possibly disagree with this comment more in a broad sense, in that -- oh, so you want a surefire literal step-by-step guide to consistently make money that stays relevant over centuries? That's fairytale thinking; you will never have that.

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.

Doesn't at all read like a step-by-step guide to make money. I got more of a "7 habits of effective people" for the 19th century vibe. I honestly don't even think he wrote this. He's probably just licensing his name to a ghost written document and signing off on the bullet points.

Edit:

I was curious about this and it looks like he wrote this after he'd fallen on hard times.

Haha I agree, we have so many people now that after huge success try to write a book, give advice, or come up with some method to do it that others can follow (see: most former start up founders that went through an acquisition and then join a VC to tell everyone else how to do it and write 3 books).

Funny that it was even happening back then!

Sounds exactly like Masterclass edutainment.

So pretty much the prototype for all those get-rich-quick people who keep taking out youtube ads for their courses.

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