my advice to young men...
The choice of a career
What is your life work going to be? That is the all-important question confronting the young man about to embark on a business career. If it is to be highly successful it must be something into which you can throw the whole force of your being. It must be something out of which you can take pleasure, and in which you can take pride.
In choosing your work, remember always that above the mere kind of business you engage in, or the money you hope to make out of it, it is your career. That is the important thing. What are you going to make of your life?
Choose then an occupation that will give you the widest scope to make of yourself the greatest and the highest success.
The Start
Business is a race. It is a struggle for supremacy, from start to finish. The field is crowded with trained competitors, eager and alert to outdo one another at every turn. The start is important. It means a great deal to get under way right. The very first step then is a firm and determined resolution to succeed. Make up your mind before you enter the race that you will go into it to stay, that you will keep the goal of success ever before your eyes, and that you will never give up until you have crossed the line a winner. Such a resolution many young men never take. The majority seem to be possessed of an idea that success is largely a matter of luck, that when they get into business, fortune will come to them in some way. They fail to realize the tremendous effort and hardship necessary to get even a foothold, and so they drift along aimlessly without a plan to guide them. Therefore, let me emphasize the importance of a sober and firm resolution at the start. Resolve with all your strength you can command that you will win, and then determine with all your might that you will keep that resolution -- and go to work.
Training for the Race
The first necessity of training for any race, and especially for the race of business success, is work. You must get down to the very simplest kind of work and learn it by the slow and tedious process of doing it. Work, in order to be highly successful, must be done because of love for it, because of the desire for accomplishment. It is only under such conditions that one is able to do his best.
All the great works of art, literature, and science are great because they are part and parcel of the being who created them.
But for the man who works because he desires improvement and advancement, because he desires to accomplish, because he wants to do something better than it has ever been done before, because he wants to be a prize winner in the great race for success, there is no limit to what he may do, the whole world is open to him, and welcomes him and will reward him richly.
Knowledge of your physical and mental requirements is necessary to health. Every man should gain this knowledge by careful study of his constitution. He must find out what it is necessary to avoid, and avoid it. He should know what he can eat and drink, and what he cannot eat and drink, and live accordingly. He should know what kind of, and how much, exercise he requires, and take it. He should know how much sleep he needs, and get it. He should find out his capacity for work, and not go beyond it. He should in all things be temperate and regular. These things are all important if a man wishes to keep himself at all times keyed up to concert pitch, and remember he cannot be keyed up if his motive power is run down.
And now as to the mind: There is a good old proverb that says, "As a man thinketh so is he," which is an eternal truth. We become largely what we think we want to be. High thinking leads to high aiming. If we think great things long enough and hard enough, some day we are likely to do them.
Believe in yourself, expect much, and work hard for it, and let your mind be busy always with new and larger plans.
A clear, clean, strong mind in a healthy body is what counts. Go into your training with such an equipment, backed by hard work, and an ardent desire to make the most of yourself, and nothing can prevent you from reaching your goal.
Work to a plan
Your career must be sketched by your imagination on the mind. You must carry there, and keep always before your eyes, a picture of the career you want to live. This will be your plan, and while you work laboriously in the sweat and heat of the day, building piece by piece, higher and higher, turn to your completed picture for encouragement and inspiration.
And how is the picture to be developed? This is the work of your ambition. To be ambitious is to dream, to long, to aspire to be something greater than we are. It is a desire to conquer, to win, to make the very most of one's self. And it is a magnificent thing for a man to strive with all the power that is in him to make the most of himself. The desire to distinguish one's self is laudable and commendable. A man without ambition is like a bird without wings.
And why shouldn't you succeed? The field is open to you, and nothing is impossible to youth and determination. Given a man with good health of body and mind, a consuming ambition to rise, and a large capacity for hard work, and it matters not who he is, where he is, or what he is, he will come to the top. You can't keep such a man down -- it would be contrary to the laws of human progress and experience.
I have tried to study the careers of great men, and am convinced that they have gained their commanding positions, not so much by the exercise of extraordinary qualities, not by reason of the possession of what is called genius, but by the practice of everyday, good, ordinary, business principles, and by sticking to them, concentrating the whole force of their strong natures on their work, gaining a little all the time, going steadily forward, step by step, higher and higher. It's wonderful what can be accomplished in time by a man who works persistently along the right lines. It's deviating from the course, getting off the track, letting down a little at times, that is fatal to progress. Stick-to-it-iveness is characteristic of all men of great achievements.
The value of time
Time is the greatest factor in successful work. The man who solves the problem of how to make the most of time has found the way to make the most of himself.
Whatever you do, put into it the whole force of your mind, and as you would avoid the waste of time, avoid the wandering of your thoughts, the scattering of your efforts -- concentrate, concentrate in all things.
Keep your eyes open, your ears attentive, and your mind active. Form the habit of observation and apply it wherever you go.
Avoid passiveness. Be curious.
Be enterprising
To be enterprising is to strike out on new and improved lines of your own, to leave the beaten path of routine and monotonous custom, and blaze for yourself a trail broad and straight through the great world of opportunity that stretches out before us on every hand. The great prizes of the world are reserved for the enterprising, for those who have the courage to dare and the will and perseverance to do. The enterprising man requires nerve, energy, and ambition. He must be willing and able to shoulder responsibility, and he must be ready to take risks. He must not be such a one as requires to see the complete and successful finish of a transaction before he undertakes it. He must be willing to back his judgment and take chances. A certain amount of caution is wise, but too great caution in business is weak and unprogressive. It is stagnation.
If you are going to accomplish anything of moment in the world you've got to strike out boldly on new lines of your own. You can't expect to make any but ordinary headway doing what others are doing. Competition under such conditions is too keen to admit of great advancement. You must break in on old methods with a new plan, or do something better than it has ever been done before. New ideas are what make big wins and fortune. The man with ideas and the nerve and energy to work them out will always find a field, no matter how crowded the market. The world demands and rewards new ideas.
Right here let me say, if you have an idea, don't be afraid to try it out. You'll never know what it is worth until you try. More good ideas perish than ever see the light of day just for the want of action. When a good idea strikes you, get busy on it at once. Don't wait for a more convenient time, don't be talked out of it, try it out. Strike while the iron is hot. Ideas are rare inspirations. Seize hold of them and act. If you are in earnest, seize this very minute. What you can do, or believe you can, begin it.
Business ability
There are two kinds of ability: natural ability and acquired ability. I have more faith in the latter than in the former, on the principle that what comes easy, goes easy, and what you get by hard knocks usually sticks.
Really the genius of success is nothing more than doing well whatever you do.
Be a specialist in something, and then take on, besides, all you can. It is the man who learns to do some one thing better than it has ever been done before who wins the prize. Practice, constant practice, is the only way to acquire sound business ability.
With practice and experience come good judgment. Good business judgment is nothing more than applying to your work the sound principles you have learned by hard experience.
The greatest stumbling block to development of men and women is the contentment with mediocrity. They fail to realize that the only real satisfaction in life is growth progress;... that it is when we give up the struggle we invite decay. We deceive ourselves if we imagine happiness is to be found in ease or comfort or idleness. It lies in the desire and effort for improvement -- in equipping ourselves for bigger and greater things.
System
The man who aims at business success must become a master of system. A business man without system is like a ship without a rudder. System not only helps you to steer your business craft on a straight course, but increases her speed. It saves time, it saves waste, it insures accuracy and dispatch. With system there is almost no end to what a man may do; without it he is a slave to detail, confined to the narrow limits of his own hands.
System should begin with your personal habits. The first thing to organize is your time. Have a time for each part of your work and plan ahead for every hour of the day. Do the important things first. To be systematic is to be regular, and the man who is not regular and prompt in his business invites disaster to his undertakings, just as he invites disease when he is irregular in the habits of his body. Learn to be orderly and systematic in the little personal things, and then you will find it easy to be systematic at the office, in business, and at your desk.
Organization, which is the greatest factor in developing and building up a great enterprise, is nothing more than the application of system in handling men and affairs. In other words, organizing is systematizing. Its object is to bring men and work into harmonious relations, with a view to reducing friction and cutting out waste, and through cooperation to increase efficiency. There is practically no limit to the possibilities of organization.
The power of organizing is exercised by the greatest and rarest business qualification called executive ability. Executive ability may be described as aptness for system and capacity for action, through the skill and affable handling of men.
Enthusiasm
To be enthusiastic is to be hopeful, to be cheerful, to be confident. At the root of enthusiasm you will find faith in mankind, faith in the world and faith in yourself. The enthusiastic man is thankful that he is alive. He finds the world a fine place to live in. He believes he has been sent into it for a purpose, and is determined to make the most of its vast opportunities.
Character
Business is but a means to an end. A man may be an unqualified success in business and gain wealth, power and fame, yet his life may be a failure. The test of the successful life comes when a man stands at last before his Maker. ... The accumulations of a lifetime of toil and struggle, in property, goods and money, count for nothing. these must all be left behind. The only accumulations we can take with us into the great hereafter are those of character.
And what is character, and how is it formed?
Character is your personality, it is the thing that distinguishes you from others. It is the thing you have come to be through all the good and bad, the pleasant and the hard experiences of your life. It is the realization of yourself. Character is formed by conduct. Conduct is the result of habits, and habits are acquired by action.
Conclusion
Strike out on your own lines. Do your own thinking. Become a positive personality, and fear no one but your Maker. Fix your aim and purpose, then begin to build your character. Build it bit by bit, as you develop your work or build your business, always improving and progressing toward your ideal.
The greatest help to this end is the forming of right habits. Here are some of the things that should be crystallized into habits:
- Be fair
- Do your duty fearlessly and cheerfully
- Be considerate, be polite
- Be courageous
- Be high toned
- Be unselfish
- Speak ill of no one
- Be natural -- the same to everyone
- Acknowledge when you are in the wrong
- Forgive freely
- You can't please everyone -- do not try
- Never forget a kindness
- Help those who are struggling up
- Share your prosperity with those who have helped you gain it
- Do not let prosperity or success spoil you
- Make your work count for eternity
From Business Success by Walter H. Cottingham, 1910
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There are two classes of young men -- one made up of those who feel the force of good principles, and are in some willingness to act from them, and the other composed of such as are led mainly by their impulses, feelings, passions, and selfish interests. But let every young man who is about to enter into business, no matter what it may be, or who commences the practice of a profession for which he has duly qualified himself, resolve, ere he takes the first step, that he, for one, will be an honest man in the community; that he will diligently seek to advance himself in his business or profession by all right means; but that he will in no case take even the smallest advantage of his neighbor.
Timothy S. Arthur, 1847
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Fortune, success, fame, position are never gained but by piously, determinedly, bravely sticking, growing, living to a thing 'till it is fairly accomplished. In short, you must carry a thing through, if you want to be anybody or anything. No matter if it does cost you the pleasure, the society, the thousand gratifications of life. Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the matter, and that no on else can do it. Put forth your whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself, and go forth to the task.
John T. Dale, 1887
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Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.
from Psalm 37
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