A Simple Idea That Paid Off

A salesman in a grocery store found himself without a position. Having had some bookkeeping experience, he took a special course in accounting, familiarized himself with all the latest bookkeeping and office equipment and went into business for himself. Starting with a grocer for whom he had formerly worked, he made contracts with more than 100 small merchants to keep their books, at a very nominal monthly fee. His idea was so practical that he soon fount it necessary to set up a portable office in a light delivery truck, which he equipped with modern bookkeeping machinery. He now has a fleet of these bookkeeping office on wheels and employs a large staff of assistants, thus providing small merchants with accounting service equal to the best that money can buy, at a very nominal cost.

Specialized knowledge plus imagination, were the ingredients that went into this unique and successful business. Last year the owner of that business paid and income tax of 10 times as much as was paid by the merchant for whom he worked when the depression force upon him a temporay adversity which proved to be a blessing in disquise.

I Will Never Stop Because Men Say No

This story is the continuous story from 3 feet from gold.

Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured through the efforts of R.U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.

Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that desire can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.

Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he stopped 3 feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, “I stopped 3 feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say 'no' when I ask them to buy Insurance.”

Darby is one of the a small group of fewer than 50 men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his “stick ability” to the lesson he learned from his “quit ability” in the gold mining business.

Before success coming in any man's life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do.

More than 500 of the most successful men this country has ever known, told me their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.

The Power of Great Dreams

We who are in this race for riches, should be encouraged to know that this changed world in which we live is demanding new ideas, new ways of doing things, new leaders, new inventions, new methods of teaching, new methods of marketing, new books, new literature, new features for the radio, new idea for moving pictures. Back of all this demand for new better things, there is one quality which one must possess to win and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

The business depression marked the death of one age, and the birth of another. This changed world requires practical dreamers who can, and will put their dreams into action. The practical dreamers have always been, and always will be the pattern-makers of civilization.

We who desire to accumulate riches, should remember the real leaders of the world always been men who harnessed, and put into practical use, the intangible, unseen forces of unborn opportunity, and have converted those forces (or impulses of thought), into skyscrapers, cities, factories, airplanes, automobiles and every form of convenience that makes life pleasant.

Tolerance and an open mind are practical necessities of the dreamer of today. Those who are afraid of new ideas are doomed before they start. Never has there been a time more favorable to pioneers than the present. True there is no wild and wooly west to be conquered, as in the days of the Covered Wagon; but there is a vast business, financial, and industrial world to be remoulded and redirected along new and better lines.

In planning to acquire your share of the riches, let no one influence you to scorn the dreamer. To win the big stakes in this changed world, you must catch the spirit of the great pioneers of the past, whose dreams have given to civilization all that it has of value, the spirit which serves as the life-blood of our own country - your opportunity and mine, to develop and market out talents.

Let us not forget, Columbus dreamed of an Unknown world, staked his life on the existence of such a world and discovered it!.

Copernicus, the great astronomer, dreamed of a multiplicity of worlds and revealed them! No one denounced him a"impractical" after he had triumphed. Instead, the world worshipped at his shrine, thus proving once more that "Success requires no apologies, failure permits no alibis."

If the thing you wish to do is right, and you believe in it, go ahead and do it! Put your dream across, and never mind what "they" say if you meet with temporary defeat, for "they," perhaps, do not know that every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.

Henry Ford, poor and uneducated, dreamed of a horseless carriage, went to work with what tools he possesed, without waiting for opportunity to favor him, and now evidence of his dream belts the entire earth. He has put more wheels into operation than any man who ever lived, because he was not afraid to back his dreams.