Peter Bazalgette is the man who is generally given credit – if credit is the right word – for bringing the “reality” television show Big Brother to Britain. His great-great-grandfather is Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the brilliant Victorian civil engineer and philanthropist, who is generally given credit for building the London sewer system, thereby saving tens of thousands of lives from cholera.

It has been said that it is easy to tell these two Bazalgettes apart: Joseph is the one who pumped the effluent out of millions of British homes; Peter is the one who pumped it back into them.

Be that as it may, Peter does at least deserve praise for his book on the business behind the Big Brother phenomenon – although is it, sadly, now out of print. It really ought to be reprinted – and until it is, it might be worth tracking down a second hand copy – because it presents one of the best recent portraits of a natural entrepreneur.

The “hero” is John de Mol, co-founder of Endemol and a compulsive deal-maker in the most literal sense: like many other very successful entrepreneurs, de Mol loves making deals so much that it actually seems like a compulsion. Natural entrepreneurs do deals like addicts do drugs.

It might seem strange to non-entrepreneurs that Bazalgette reckons that the self-made multi-multi-millionaire de Mol is not particularly interested in money. One of de Mol’s closest associates is quoted as saying that it is making deals, not making money that matters to him. Of course, this does not mean that de Mol does not care about money: for one thing, the money is necessary to quantify the success of his deal-making – but not much more than that, a way of keeping score.

The paradox in all this is that those who are able to focus on the deal, rather than on the money at the end of the deal, are far more likely to become very rich than those who are simply obsessed with money.

In business, as in any game, the trick is to keep one’s mind on the game, not the rewards. The player who spends the whole game day-dreaming about how good it will be if he wins will not win. Victory goes to the player who stays focussed throughout the game on the game itself – and this is usually the player who loves playing the game for its own sake.

We had no sooner finished our last post – on how last week’s US Congressional elections will make little difference to America’s underperforming economy – than our view was confirmed by the most authoritative source.

The US Federal Reserve has agreed to buy more federal government bonds – in effect allowing the government to print more money.

This decision has been strongly condemned by other countries. America, unable to deal with her own problems, is flooding the world markets with more cheap money. It is a selfish act.

Yet it may also be a necessary act. The real antidote to the lethargy of the US recovery would be for the federal government to take decisive political action to unleash the enormous latent power of American free enterprise – cutting taxes and regulation. However, the probability is that deadlock between the Democratic President and the Republican House of Representatives will prevent any such action.

That leaves the Federal Reserve as the only authority with the power to do anything, at least for the next two years.

So Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is right to step in and try to fill the leadership vacuum. There is simply no one else who can do anything. Whether his first decision as the new undisputed Commander-in-Chief of the US economy is a wise one is, to put it politely, far more questionable.

Printing more money is a short-term solution that does nothing to address America’s longer term loss of competitiveness. Indeed, the superficial prosperity it is intended to produce might itself be dangerous, as it covers up America’s underlying problems and generates a false sense of security.

The greatest danger of all is that other countries will follow America’s example. After all, what is the point of virtuously balancing one’s own budget when someone else is benefitting from cheap money?

This post is published in conjunction with our Podcast #121 – Wealth Creation

It might seem odd when a podcast dedicated to business warns against trying too hard to get rich.

Yet it is a truism so anciently established and so authoritative that it is found even in the Bible: wealth gotten hastily will not endure.

In business circles, one often meets people who act like successful entrepreneurs. They have the suits and the cars, and they throw money around. However, something about them does not ring true. Perhaps it is the very fact that they are spending so ostentatiously – most genuinely successful entrepreneurs have learned the value of a penny on their journey and retain a healthy respect for money, even when they can afford to spend.

The high-spenders usually fall into one of two categories. Category One are basically con-men, who rarely have any real money of their own, but they pretend that they do on the principle that money attracts money.

Category Two high-rollers really do have money, and are usually honest and sincere, but they still do not quite ring true.

These are the people who suddenly became rich. Yes, it does happen – quite a lot in fact. Perhaps they won the lottery or inherited a fortune from a distant relative or happened to stumble on to a single successful business deal, almost by accident. Sometimes it is simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

A man can live a thoroughly unenterprising life, perhaps as an employee rising very slowly through the ranks, but if he is the one who happens to hear some decisive inside information about the markets, or who crawls his way up to board rank just in time for a management buy-out, or who exercises a share option just as the company goes public, or who owns a crucial strip of land when a new supermarket comes to town, then he can go from salary drone to millionaire almost overnight.

It is the modern equivalent of the prospector who happens to strike gold. The odds against a major strike in a gold rush were high, and most prospectors made a loss overall, but there were always enough who hit the mother lode to keep everyone else digging in hope.

The depressing thing is how even those who struck it rich often ended up poor in the end. Watching the modern versions, it is easy to see how.

They find that money does not bring happiness. Many get addicted to high spending. They forget that their windfall was a one-off. They end up scrabbling around for more money. Even where that does not happen, the suddenly-rich often feel a sense of inadequacy. Part of them feels guilty that they have not really earned their wealth.

Whether it is because they need more money or self-respect or both, they try to become real businessmen. They hang out with the genuine article and try to talk to the talk. So they become the Category Twos – and easy meat for the Category One con-men they encounter.

Without the education that can only come from years of business experience – and, above all, from learning from mistakes along the way – the poor Category Two is wholly out of his depth. Some survive long enough to learn from the mistakes, and may in time flourish. Most do not.

If all this sounds too negative, it is leading to a very positive conclusion: there is a good way to get rich – and, oddly enough, one that is also mentioned in the Bible.

If you want to be rich, stop thinking about being rich. Do not spend your time thinking about the yachts, the helicopters, the sports cars, and the supermodels you will have when you are rich. Those who spend their time fantasising on those things never end up rich. Think instead about what people want and need. Focus on developing the best possible products and services that meet those wants and needs, and on getting them to the market. Then stop thinking and act – and one day, perhaps almost without noticing, you may end up seriously and permanently rich.