At 80 years old, Hugh Hefner has had an impressive career building a multi-million dollar industry and living the life of his dreams, all the while pushing the limits of and revolutionizing the American publishing industry. How did he manage to achieve all this? “You stay in touch with the boy who dreamed impossible dreams,” he says.

“If there was going to be a sexual revolution, I would be its pamphleteer,” Hefner once said. Looking back to the time when Playboy magazine was first launched, not only did Hefner spark a sexual revolution, but he also used his entrepreneurial instincts to capitalize on it.

“I had always been interested in publishing. I created my first penny newspaper when I was 10 years old. (I don’t remember how much I made–if anything.) I did another one in seventh grade called the Pepper, which lasted for a quarter of a century.

Later I created a little magazine called Shudder, about horror and mystery movies and radio shows and books. While I was in college, I edited a college humor magazine called Shaft, where I introduced a feature called Co-Ed of the Month.

I haven’t a clue. I’m always struck by the people who think they do have a clue. It’s perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It’s something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe.

I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean — if it has any meaning at all?

But how can it all exist if it doesn’t have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers.

I urge one and all to live this life as if there is no reward in the afterlife, and do it in a moral way that makes it better for you and for those around you and leaves this world a little better place than when you found it.

I think the opportunities are everywhere now. The changes in technology make all things possible. The Internet and all of that make it possible for people to start businesses of all kinds with much less capital than was once true. You can go into publishing by starting your own little Web site.“