Chapter 6

The more a man does with his brain the less his hands will have to do. The better a man's reasoning and common sense are, the more successful he will be. It requires hard work these days to keep up in the race.

You cannot make a success unless you work hard. Hard work will be much easier if you keep worry out of it.

Hard work brings success, but to do hard work, the machinery must be in good order. You must keep your constitution up, you must have plenty of sleep and you must learn to eat and breathe properly.

No story of success has ever been truly written that did not depict hard work in every line.

Success comes by inches, not by leaps or bounds. Success is the pushing forward each day by hard work.

Burn the candle at one end only and you replace each day what you have burned, by rest, sleep and recreation. By burning the candle at one end only and replacing it fully each day, your candle will not burn out.

Kindness

"A little word in kindness spoken, A motion or a tear, Has often healed the heart that's broken And made a friend sincere."

There's nothing in business that pays so well as kindness. A man may spend his money, and in proportion as he spends it he reduces his principal. With kindness the matter is different, for in proportion as you spend kindness your principal increases.

Lincoln said "You can catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a gallon of vinegar."

Kindness is beautiful. It brings round you many persons who are ready to say kind words to you. This subtle, potent influence of having lots of friends to help you by their actions and showing their hearts is a great blessing. It is surprising that people know so little of the value of kindness.

The word "gentleman" is really a compound word, meaning gentle-man, and these words together in their simplicity are the true definition of the word gentleman.

Kindness means gentleness. No man is a gentleman who is not kind.

People are glad to recognize goodness and kindness in an individual. No one can act the part if he is not sincere. We must cultivate kindness, if there is little of it in our makeup. We must take an inventory of our qualities, and if the weeds of mean impulses are crowding out the delicate flowers of kindness, we should pull out those weeds and give the flowers a chance to grow.

Lincoln was a kind man, kindness was his chief delight, and his examples of kindness have been of untold benefit to millions of people. You remember he said, "When they lay me away let it be said of me that as I traveled along life's road I have always endeavored to pull up a thistle and plant a rose in its stead."

Life at best is short, and the only things we really get out of life are happiness, health and love. Money cannot buy these things.

The trouble with many business men is that they imagine good examples and kindness have no place in business. They think the time to be kind is after they have attained success financially. They think the time to show kindness is outside of business hours.

The real way to be happy is to do the thing now, live each day for itself. Get kindness in each day.

The man who is grave, austere, the man who tries to skin the other fellow, who devotes all his energies to money-making alone, finds as the years go by and he has attained his goal, but that he does not know how to enjoy himself.

There are three periods in a man's life--the future, the now and the past. When we attain old age our life is largely made up of reminiscences, or looking back over the past. If our past life has been one of struggle, worry and getting the best of the other fellow, then there is little happiness in looking back over such a life.

The true philosopher does the thing now, he lives each day. He puts kindness into his action, and when he grows old, he can look back through a life that was pleasant as he lived it, and pleasanter now in living it over again.

One of the Greek philosophers expresses the following beautiful thought: "If there is any good deed I can do, or kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

The trouble is that some of us keep our kindnesses, or rather the expression of it, until it is too late.

We should remember--"Do not keep the alabaster box of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness, speak approvingly cheerful words while their ears can hear them; the kind things you mean to say when they are gone say before they go. The flowers you mean to send for their coffins send to brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave them. If my friends have alabaster boxes laid away full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection which they intend to lay over my dead body, I would rather they would bring them out in my weary and troubled hours, and open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by them while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without a flower and a funeral without an eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Post-mortem kindness does not cheer the troubled spirit. Flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over life's weary way."

The Salesman

Selling goods or soliciting requires careful study. The salesman who makes the greatest success in the long run is the man who has practiced truth and established himself in the confidence of his customers.

The whirlwind makes a good showing on the start, but, by the law of compensation, what a man gains in speed he loses in power.

Some customers are slow to open up and extend their confidence to a salesman. Others make up their minds quickly and express their preferences.

A great deal of preliminary work can be avoided if the salesman is tactful on the start. First impressions are lasting, and a salesman should study carefully his first appearance. He should be neatly but not flashily dressed. He should be a gentleman above all things. The gentleman dresses so that later we can not accurately describe the clothes he wore. It is the flashily dressed salesman we can describe later on, for his clothes are so out of the ordinary that they are remarkable in this respect. The flashily dressed salesman is remembered by his clothes rather than by his personality.

The solicitor should never smoke in the presence of the customer on first acquaintance. The matter of smoking in a customer's presence has prejudiced many a man against a salesman who has this practice. Business men have prejudices, and to some smoking is highly obnoxious. Under no circumstances smoke in a customer's presence unless the customer is smoking, or until at least you are well acquainted with him, and have received his permission to smoke.

Times without number the writer has left his half-finished cigar in the hall-way before entering the customer's presence.

Story telling is like a two-edged sword; sometimes it helps and sometimes it is a distinct disadvantage to tell stories. You must know when to tell stories, and, above all, do not tell stories to your customer that he could not repeat in his home.

Above all things, the salesman must know his man. If the customer gives evidence that he is fond of a story, then remember a good story and tell it to him. No salesman ever made a distinct hit by telling vulgar stories. While a customer may laugh, he forms an opinion of you that is not complimentary, and, if you are always telling stories that you would not repeat where women were present, the customer forms a very low estimate of your character.

The facts are the world is full of good stories, and good stories help your case, while vulgar stories hurt it.

Drinking is another method used by many salesmen to gain favor with a customer, and what we have said about vulgar stories may be applied to the matter of drinking.

Years ago it was a general practice to take the customer out and get him half seas over before trying to sell him.

The customers who are most susceptible to influence through whiskey are the ones who are most likely later on to cause you trouble, either through failure in business or through their preference for some other individual who can outdo you in the matter of drinking.

You must get your customer by the heart and not by the stomach. You must make your customer believe in you.

In these days the business man likes to deal with a salesman who is business from the start. He only buys goods because he expects to make money on them, and the sooner the transaction is over, the sooner he can turn his attention to other matters.

The best advertising solicitors and best salesmen are those who get business on business grounds and through their knowledge of their business, rather than through their ability to tell stories, order dinners and drink liquor.

The good salesman studies the other side of the question. He acquaints himself with the method used by the customer in disposing of his goods. He does not talk his own side of the case all the time. He works with the customer, tries to give him good advice and shows an interest in the customer's business. Such a salesman gets close to the customer, and retains his patronage long after the good fellow has passed away.

Be wise, be patient, and above all things, acquaint yourself thoroughly with the goods you are selling. Know more about them than your customer does. Live up to your obligations. Keep your appointments. Study your customers' welfare. Help them when opportunity offers.

The life insurance solicitor who gets the most turn-downs is the one who writes the most policies, because the fact he gets so many turn-downs is owing to the fact that he has seen so many people.

Hard work, cheerfulness, honesty, patience, sobriety and knowledge of good goods will make a man a successful salesman.

Honesty

Under this caption we are expected to say "Honesty is the best policy." This expression is as old as the hills, and if it were not good it would not have obtained so long, for honesty certainly is the best policy.

Many a man in business practices absolute honesty and integrity, because honesty is the simplest and best method he knows of for doing business.

No man can succeed permanently, who is dishonest in his practices. The successful business man is the one who practices honesty in all actions and dealings during his business experience.

Honesty begets honesty. The man who is honest in his dealings with his fellowman has a subsidy which money cannot buy. He gets honest treatment at the hands of others.

The merchant who cuts a bolt of silk in the middle and puts different prices on each piece, may figure he is making money by his action, but retribution is sure to follow.

Honesty is a slow road to wealth, but, in accordance with the law of compensation, in proportion as the business built up on honesty is slow, so in proportion will it last longer.

Honesty is the best advertisement a man can have in his business.

Success

If after the employe strikes a balance each day, he finds that he is moving forward, then he is on the road to success. And so it is with the business man, only the proportions are greater.

One cent put at four per cent. interest per annum nineteen hundred years ago, with interest added to the principal every twenty-five years, would represent today more money than there is in the world. It would have taken twenty-five years before the original investment of one cent was doubled.

If a man had started that plan his grandchildren would have said the scheme was no good because it was too slow.

The boy goes to school regularly and shows little advance in his mentality if you measure from day to day, but the boy is gaining every day. He is going ahead slowly but certainly.

The gambler and the foolish man like success to come quickly and with great strides. It is because there are many foolish men and gamblers that the get-rich-quick fake thrives.

The man who gets rich suddenly usually indulges in such sports as lighting cigars with ten dollar bills, and his wind-up is in the pauper's grave.

No man knows the true value of money unless he has worked for it. The man who has earned his dollars through the penny route knows the value of the penny, and he gets mighty good value when he spends a dollar.

The man who walks steadily in one direction does not appear to be making much progress. The ship on the ocean seems to be standing still. When night comes the man who has been walking steadily has disappeared, and the ship that seemed to be standing still has vanished beyond the horizon.

The law of compensation says, The more haste the less speed, and so in the matter of success, we must not feel discouraged because the speed at which we are traveling forward does not seem noticeable when compared with the rapid pace of some of our friends.

Be not impatient. Learn to wait. Be a good stayer. Do not let the success of the get-rich-quick creature deter you from your resolve to move forward slowly. You will get there in the long run.

And when your hair is silvered and cares rest easily upon your shoulders, the long road you have traveled will be a source of infinite satisfaction to you. Your retrospection will be pleasant, and the very things that were hard in your youth, are sources of satisfaction to you in your old age.

Do not use the yard measure in counting your progress, but use the inch rule that has fine fractions on it.

Thinking

"I did not think" is an excuse offered by many. Thinking is the thing in business.

The trunk railroad, the trans-Atlantic cable, the steam engine, the electric light, the wireless telegraph, the very republic in which we are living, came about through thinking.

Every man should take from five to fifty minutes each day to divorce his mind from the strenuous activity surrounding him, and devote that time to thought, and good will come out of it.

The brain is like a muscle, it must be exercised or it becomes flabby.

Cultivate concentration of thought; study your sphere of usefulness; cut out the weeds that grow in your brain; get out of the mental rut you are in; stop drifting; keep your brain healthily active.

Men are paid either for what they think or for what their muscles do. Man's muscles have a limit; he can move just so much matter by physical force. But his capacity from a mental standpoint is unlimited.

The world offers golden prizes to the man who thinks. Therefore we should cultivate our brains and make them expand. The brain is like a plant. If you nourish and cultivate it and care for it, it will grow too.

Excitement, striving for pleasures, indulging in reading light, frothy literature, excessive daily newspaper reading are all weeds and thought killers.

Don't act on impulses. The get-rich-quick man or the fake mine promoter says, "Buy today, the price goes up tomorrow." These fakirs don't want you to think. Thinking is an enemy to their persuasive arguments. If you think, and think rightly, the fakir does not get you.

When you get a nasty letter don't answer it right away. Think it over. Think carefully. If your thoughts of revenge are so strong that you cannot calm yourself down, then write a letter and express yourself in the fullest degree. Leave the letter on your desk. Do not look at it for three hours. Then when you look at it you will instantly determine to tear it up, because in the meantime you have been thinking.

Thoughts expressed on paper have a different sound than if they are uttered verbally, therefore you should think carefully when you write.

Cultivate poise, calmness, and practice careful thought before you speak or write.

In proportion as you master difficult problems through thought, your brain will be ready for greater conquests.

Here are some things to think about during these times when business is so good.

These prosperous times are dangerous times. In times of prosperity we build up false idols, and raise our hopes and ambitions beyond the safety point.

Prosperity makes most of us careless. We don't give our business the careful consideration we should. We run to extremes during prosperous times.

We should make the most of prosperity while it is here. We should enjoy it to the fullest, but we should remember that for every high tide there is a low ebb.

Prosperity should enable us to put away a reserve for the hard times.

We should be careful that prosperity does not turn our heads or cause us to lose our vigilance.

Home Life

After all we say and do, the real pleasure of this world comes from the home. The gilded palaces we see in our travels abroad are beautiful to look upon presently, but later on they serve their purpose to make a contrast with the sweet simplicity of home.

When you go home, cut business out, and let play and sociability and love occupy your time.

A married man should be in partnership with his wife. The man being fitted with sturdier physique, with strong ability to combat, should take up the heavy burden of business, for those are the things he can do the best. The wife should take up the home part of the duties of the firm, and when evening falls each member of the firm should try to lessen or take away the cares to which the other has been subject during the day.

The best place in the world is the home, and in proportion as home life is unsatisfactory or uncongenial, so in proportion are the Clubs filled with dissatisfied and unhappy men. If you want to hear pessimistic talks on home life, talk with those derelicts who spend most of their time at the Clubs.

Learn to make much of little things. Learn that smiles and good humor in the home bring happiness, and iron out the frowns and check the mean impulses arising within us. Be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will take care of itself. Start out in the morning right and happiness will be home at night.

There is nothing in your old age that will be such a comfort to you as retrospection, or looking back over a long life of happiness in the home. The happy little incidents which today seem trivial will be remembered in the future, and a thousand and one occurrences which are happening in the home are being put away in the store-house of memory, later to be called upon and enjoyed again.

In the evening of life when you and your silver-haired partner sit before the fire place, when you have retired from active participation in your respective branches of the business, which is bread winning on the part of the man and bread making on the part of the woman, then you will have a happiness and satisfaction which all the gold in the world could not buy. The pleasures of the old who have had happy homes during their lives are the greatest pleasures in the world.

The sunset of your life will not be beautiful unless your home life was pleasant during your day of work.

Optimism

The man who is an optimist may be laboring under a delusion, but certain it is that he is happy while under the delusion.

Every man should have ideals. He should see the beauty and good in things. He may not accomplish his ideals, but the anticipation and working out of them is a mighty pleasant vocation.

The pessimist is always unhappy, and when no definite thing is before him to worry about, the very fact that there is nothing to worry about makes him unhappy.

The pessimist says "Business is not half as good as it would be if it was twice as good as it is." The optimist says "Business is twice as good as it would be if it was only half as good as it is."

Grizzly Pete, of Frozen Dog, Idaho, is an optimist, and Webb Grubb, of the same town, is a pessimist. A short time ago they had a big rain storm in Frozen Dog. Webb Grubb kicked about the rain. Grizzly Pete, all wreathed in smiles, said "Rain is a mighty good thing to lay the dust." A few days later the sun came out oppressively warm. Webb Grubb kicked about the warm weather. Grizzly Pete, again all smiles, said "Hot weather and sunshine are mighty good things to dry the mud."

The pessimist goes about with a dark lantern peering into out-of-the-way places, ever looking for meanness and things to find fault about.

The optimist goes about in the bright sunlight looking for the beautiful things, and sees more things by the aid of the great sunshine than the pessimist can find with his little dark lantern.

The optimist rises in the morning with gladness in his heart, sunshine in his face and smiles upon his lips. The mere privilege of living and enjoying nature is a priceless satisfaction to him. He gets good out of life every moment he lives. He is a man to be envied, if envy is ever allowable.

The pessimist warps his mind and his physique, and his influence on others is decidedly bad.

The optimist raises the average of the world by his presence, the pessimist lowers the average.

The optimist is in the majority, however, and the world is growing better.

Learn to see beauty in the small things. Study nature. Watch the processes of plant life and animal life. Surround yourself with helpful influences; books, music, friends.

There is no investment a man can make that yields such unbounded returns as optimism.

Optimism cannot be bought with money. It is as free as the air we breathe. That is why poor people generally are optimists.

Memory

The man whose memory allows him to play four games of chess blindfolded is good for nothing else.

Book-keepers who can name every folio page and every customer's balance are good for little else.

There is nothing in mental gymnastics from the dollar standpoint.

The good lawyer or the good business man does not rely on his memory, but rather his ability to find out things and get at results.

If you remember only the customers who are slow pay or shaky, it will be a lot easier than to remember the names of all the customers who pay promptly.

If your wife wants you to get something down town tomorrow, write her request on a little piece of paper, roll it up in a ball, put it in your pocket with your loose change. Forget the incident, let the paper do the memory act.

Next day when you reach in your pocket for change you will find the little ball with the reminder on it.

If there is something you want to attend to at home, drop yourself a postal card.

Carry a little pad of paper in your pocket. Write down the little things you are to do. Don't store your mind with these temporary matters. Let the tab remember for you.

Let your mind be like a sieve, and have the meshes coarse enough to keep in the big things and let the little things go through.

Have your business figures written down, your comparative sales, increases or losses. Study the written figures. Have system. Do things methodically. Don't trust to your memory. If the thing you see or hear is worth keeping, write it down on the little tab.

The orator who commits his speech to memory is in a sorry plight if he forgets a sentence.

If you are to speak at a dinner, lay out your plan, divide your topic into several parts. Jot down the catch lines, and just before you speak look over the ticket. Charge your brain with the points or ideas and build the words around them.

Don't remember things with verbatim correctness. Remember the skeleton thought, the idea.

When you quote a price or figure, jot it down. Confirm the verbal statement by a written memorandum.

Memory is a bad servant sometimes. You remember a thing one way and the other fellow remembers it another way. You are both honest, but one of you is wrong. If you had made a memorandum in duplicate or jotted down the figures, what trouble it would have saved you.

Where dollars are concerned it is good sense to trust to a written memo., and not to any mental memo.

No use to cram your brain with transient things, when lead pencils and paper are so cheap and so easily obtainable.