Robert Collier - The Robert Collier Letter Book

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What is the eternal question which stands up and looks you and every sincere man squarely in the eye every morning?

"How can I better my condition?

That is the real life question which confronts you, and will haunt you every day till you solve it. Read carefully the enclosed booklet, and see if you don’t find in it the answer to this important life question which you and every man must solve if he expects ever to have more each Monday morning after pay day than he had the week before.

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Your grandfather in his buggy traveled no faster than Caesar; in individual transportation he was almost as limited as a citizen of Rome.

Suddenly—the automobile—and our generation is unshackled! With a car, miles shrivel up into minutes, and the humblest family leaves its doorstep to own the continent.

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All day long, from the minute your mind takes the trail early in the morning, until you quit the game late at night—you are figuring on ways to sell more goods, to win more trade, to possess more executive ability, to be a bigger business builder.

This is the one great heart and soul aim of which you are ever conscious— the mastery of your business, the rising to supremacy in your line, the steady year in and year out increase of financial income. You’d willingly spend a few minutes to learn new ways of directing and developing your mental energies so as to cut out waste motion and make every move count for 100% progress.

Did you ever stop to think that the average man’s brain wastes more energy than the worst old rattle-box that ever squandered good steam? It’s the knowing how to apply your brain-power—how to think, how to reason, how to conserve mental energy, how to concentrate, that alone can make you a leader in your profession.

And it was to teach you how to think, how to concentrate, how to apply the basic fundamentals of all science to your own daily problems that the Blank Course was written. It shows you, etc.

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It was payday in Connellsville, Pa., and I was sitting in a local store, talking with the owner—When a laborer came in. He said he wanted so-and-so, that he, etc.

So I thought this: You want more business—want your store recognized as the, etc.

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If you are tired of a salaried job, if you want to get into a big-paying, independent business of your own, I have a proposition that will interest you.

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Here’s a little "inside information" that we’re passing on to you, because you are a home-maker, and as such it concerns you.

We got a little low on summer stock the other day, so our buyer, Mr. Smith (he’s full of ideas and enthusiasm) went to the source of supplies, and we just got a letter from him, thus: (Then give the news of some special buy that enables you to offer a wonderful bargain.)

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What is it worth to keep baby’s milk sweet? By making your refrigerator measure up to that all-important job, you make it measure up to all other jobs.

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Some time today or tomorrow or next month, in practically every commercial office in the U.S., an important executive will sit back in his chair and study a list of names on a sheet of white paper before him.

Your name may be on it. A position of responsibility is open, and he is face to face with the old, old problem—"Where can I find the man?"

The faces, the words, the deeds, the possibilities of various employees pass through his mind in quick review, and he realizes once again how little an employer really knows about their hopes, their ambitions, their particular ability to handle more important work. That is where the Blank School can help him—and you.

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What has given the high values to Iowa farm land? Corn. What has given the rapid advance in farm values to all the central western states? Corn. What is the biggest factor in making the farm lands of lower Louisiana advance? Corn. Why? "Because they are in the corn belt."

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If your expenses were doubled tomorrow, could you meet them—without running heavily into debt? If you had to have more money on which to live—to support those dependent upon you—could you make it?

You could if you had the training afforded by our Course. It has doubled other men’s salaries. It can do the same for you.

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For 20 years I was an exile, shunned by people on every hand, unwanted in the business world, impossible socially, a mental and physical wreck, a failure at everything. I was despondent, almost devoid of hope. Life to me was a burden.

And then I learned to talk! (And so on with description of a course to cure stammering.)

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Right around New Year’s, most of us are somehow thinking about what we’ll accomplish within the next twelve months. Often we get to figuring and planning and laying it all out beforehand.

So maybe it will mean a lot of inspiration to you, as it did to me, to read.

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I have come to look upon it as a pity that circumstances should ever combine to place men of much ability in a position where they are not obliged to begin with a struggle for existence. For most individuals are so constituted that they are obliged to do so. The saving event in many a man’s life is the blow that takes away the props that have supported him, and leaves him to look out for himself.

Many persons have told me that this is true of their own lives, and we know it is true of ours. So instead of railing against the fate that makes it necessary for you to dig in and make something of yourself, thank God for it, and start now getting ready. The Blank Course will fit you, etc.

The old gentleman who resigned from the Patent Office in 1886 because, as he said, everything had been invented, had nothing on the most of us. There are times when we all begin to feel that mechanical equipment is about as perfect as man can make it.

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Take lubrication for instance. In spite of the thousands of dollars wasted in furnishing six ounces of oil to a bearing that needs only one, production men are satisfied until, of course, someone comes along and shows them where 500% can be saved.

Making production men dissatisfied with their lubrication equipment is our business. Here is a new kind of Bolshevism that pays all around.

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You’ve got to have more money. Your salary, without income, is not enough. The man who depends upon salary alone to make him rich, well-to-do or even comfortable, is making the mistake of his life. For the minute you stop working, the money stops coming in. Lose a day and you lose a day’s pay—while expenses go right on.

Don’t you think it’s time you got Nature to work for you? A dollar put into a peach orchard will work for you days, nights and Sundays. It never stops to sleep or eat, but keeps on growing, growing—from the very minute you put your money in.

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A small moss lamp is sufficient to heat an Eskimo’s igloo—because its walls are insulated. Minute particles of "dead air," held captive in the snow blocks, provide natural insulation—the most efficient known to science.

But present-day homes of ordinary construction waste two-thirds of the heat that comes from the furnaces.

One-third of this heat naturally escapes through windows and doors. The other third is unnecessarily wasted. It escapes easily through uninsulated walls and roofs.

Ordinary building materials cannot hold heat in. Celotex stops heat waste.

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There’s a bank here in Chicago—not much larger than yours—that secured over 280 new savings depositors last month! And secured them, mind you, on the sole strength of business-getting circular letters, without the aid of a single solicitor! That’s why this letter is as vital to you as though it were a certified check. For it tells how, etc.