Dollars and Sense Part 3

Ambition makes men strive to get ahead. Ambition cultivates taking chances.

Nearly every man is a gambler. Some of you will be shocked at this statement, yet upon careful a.n.a.lysis nearly every move a successful business man makes is a gamble. He is betting that he will take in more money than he lays out on a new plan. The man with ambition is a gambler. The man who learns a trade and does not strive to increase his earnings is not a gambler.

We pride ourselves on our ability to buy cheaply, because the cheaper we can buy the greater our earnings will be and the less our gamble.

Any man with two hands and ordinary health can earn a livelihood, but the ambitious man wants to make a name for himself and to make a success in business, so he works harder than he would do if his problem were only the obtaining of money enough to buy the things necessary for his existence.

The moment a man loses ambition, his progress, so far as business advancement is concerned, ceases.

Nearly every successful business today is successful because the proprietors, in the infancy of the business, were filled with ambition which made them work hard.

We are all familiar with the successful business man who loses his ambition. It is an absolute certainty that as soon as a man loses ambition his business falls off, unless he makes it an object to take care of the ambitious young men in his employ, so that they may keep up the pace of progress he established.

Lawyers

Keep in touch with a lawyer, but don't take his advice on business matters.

A lawyer should be like a dictionary--a place of reference.

Lawyers by the very nature of their vocation have much to do with concerns who are in trouble, and with firms who are poorly managed.

Lawyers know law first and business second; the business man knows business first and law second.

The advice of one successful business man is worth the advice of twenty-three lawyers on a matter of business.

Use the lawyer to keep you out of trouble. Let him see your contracts and the papers and agreements pertaining to leases, sales, purchases, royalties, and all doc.u.ments which may from their nature be brought into court as evidence. These things are the ones on which to take the lawyer's advice.

When you are pushed into a corner and must fight, then get the best lawyer, for in a fight in court, like a fight in the prize ring, the best trained and equipped man usually wins.

It's more often the best lawyer wins than the best side of the case.

Legal struggles seldom pay. Law suits take up time and money, and the result, even if in your favor, seldom offsets the time, money and worry you have expended.

The good lawyer keeps you from fighting. Many lawyers, however, are grafters, and they advise fight, for they win whether you do or not.

Settle disputes even if you are imposed on. There is little satisfaction in getting a judgment for one hundred dollars, when your lawyers fees are fifty dollars and you have expended two hundred dollars' worth of time and worry over the case.

Ask your lawyer's advice on the legal status of your operations, and not on business propositions.

If you are a success in business that is an evidence, generally speaking, that your judgment is good.

You can get all the advice you want for nothing. If you state a case and lay out a proposed plan, and then ask your friends' advice on the subject, you can safely count that nine out of ten will say that your proposition is all right as outlined by you.

These friends figure that you have given the plan much thought and study, and it is much simpler for them to coincide with your opinion than to take an opposite view.

Honestly between ourselves we must admit that when we seek advice we generally do it only for the purpose of having our own opinions confirmed, and, if our friends do not agree with us, we say they are prejudiced.

Lawyers don't see the smooth, systematic, well balanced side of business, and their knowledge is all negative instead of positive on business matters.

If you have an important move in mind, map out the plan carefully, lay the plan out in detail, be conservative in your estimate of prospective profits, and always make a liberal allowance for cost over the figures you have prepared, and deduct a liberal percentage from the receipts you antic.i.p.ate. Be very conservative in matters of figures, and then some.

The building you propose to put up will cost far more than your architect tells you. You know this in advance, and you make an allowance for extras, but when the bills all come in you will find that in addition to the estimated cost and the extras which you have figured on, there will be something else to pay.

The sales of a business you propose to embark in will be less than you or your manager figure they will be.

Always allow for enthusiasm and imagination in the matter of prospective receipts.

When your plans are all in shape show the doc.u.ments, contracts and agreements to your lawyer, and get his legal, but not his personal, advice.

You must be the doctor of your own business.

Remember, a lawyer knows law, and a business man knows business.

Be a Producer

Employes are divided into two cla.s.ses--the kind that makes profits and the kind that is on the expense side of the ledger.

The young man who has the foresight and ability to get on the selling side, the side that brings profit to the house, has the decided advantage over the young man who is on the expense side.

Book-keepers, stock-keepers, clerks and all other expense employes are paid far lower salaries than the salesmen and buyers, those who produce results.

In the newspaper business the editor with his college education has practically attained his limit of progress when he is 40 years old. He may get from $20.00 to $80.00 or even $100.00 a week as editor.

The young man in the advertising department may get from $50.00 to $200.00 a week. He is a producer of tangible results; the editor produces theoretical results.

In every business the man who sells things, who brings in the profits, is the man who gets the best pay.

The boss will grudgingly give a dollar a week increase to the book-keeper. He only thinks what it would cost him to replace the book-keeper.

The producer gets his increases in $5.00 and $10.00 a week jumps.

The expense employe is in compet.i.tion with the great army of the unemployed, and there are mult.i.tudes who will work for less money than the man who is holding his job on the expense side.

The producer, on the other hand, knows how much profit he is bringing into his house, and if those profits are steadily increasing he may be sure his salary will increase proportionately. If it does not he can always get another position by laying the facts and figures before some more enterprising house.

The producer is seldom out of a situation. If for any reason he is out of employment temporarily he can go to a good house and work on commission, or get a small drawing account, and at three or six months talk salary on actual showing made.

The shrewd business man won't let profits slip away if he can help it, so the real producer sits in a pretty good seat. He has only to show what he can do and he will be paid accordingly.

The expense man's only stock in trade is faithfulness, neatness and amount of detail he can handle. He has little lee-way in the matter of salary, for thousands are faithful, thousands are neat and thousands can perform great amounts of detail.