Excerpts from
The Secret of Power in
Business
by Glenn Clark
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Book
Description
In this excellent and very
hard to
find book Glenn Clark outlines positive, sound, biblical principles
that can be utilized by anyone to achieve success in any type of
business. Chapters include: Teamwork, Fairness to the Customer,
Fairness to Employees, Keeping in the Flow, Tithing, Think Straight,
One's Duty to Oneself, Enthusiasm and Joy, Reverence toward God.
"There are only two great economic systems in
operation in the world today. If Capitalism in
the spirit of Christian love can solve the problem of distribution and
bring unemployment to an end, it will find
itself spreading and recapturing the nations it has lost to its rival.
But if Capitalism is permeated with selfishness
it will gradually give way to Communism, Technocracy or
some other form of Socialism.
The theme of this book is not
how to
save
Capitalism, but to serve as a guide that may help
practical businessmen to make God their Senior Partner as they serve
their fellowmen."
The Secret to
Power in Business
A new science has just
been
discovered, a
science that is already revolutionizing one whole
area of the medical profession. In fact, there is not a single area in
the entire art of healing that has not felt its
influence. I refer to the science of psychosomatics.
The revolutionary idea at the
root
of this new science is that
emotional states can influence health as much as
and usually much more than physical states. In other words, the
medical profession, after all these years, is just commencing to
discover what Jesus, two thousand years ago,
stated in very simple terms: "Not that which entereth into the mouth
defileth
the man; but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the
man."
And so doctors today, when
confronted by a case of asthma, instead of
giving pills, say, "Stop your self-pity and
break loose from your mother's apron strings"; when confronted
with rheumatism say, "Stop your criticism"; when confronted with anemia
say, "Stop your unhappiness."
Now if a person's heart can be
improved in tone
by more love, and if the circulation of the
blood is enhanced by more joy, and if other conditions in the body can
be
brought back to normal through adequate use of peace and harmony, just
think of how these same principles might
function when applied to business!
When a patient with a sick
body
comes to a
physician the very first thing he does is to
find out where the source of infection is, and he then proceeds at once
to drain out the poison. In the old days this
process was limited to the body alone.
But the new science has
revealed
that frequently
the source of poison is to be found in the mind
and soul.
Now let us apply this to the
business world. When
a sick business is brought to an Efficiency
Expert first of all he naturally will look for the "poisons." For
instance, he investigates to find out if they
have too large a payroll, too many untrained or inefficient workers,
or if they are using too poor materials or are located in the wrong
districts. Supposing he takes a cue from the
medical profession, however, and goes one step further and
looks for poisons in the heart and soul of the directors, the managers
and the workers.
Let us see if here we can find
a new
secret for
opening a doorway to business success. As a coach
of football and track for twenty years, I have found this to be
amazingly true in opening doors to athletic
success. Let me illustrate . . .
One day one of my athletes
came in
my office and said, "There is
something wrong with my life. I always thought
an athlete had to be tough, and the tougher he was, the
better the athlete. But I find that the best athletes on your team are
the finest boys in college. I asked the captain
what was the big idea. He replied, 'We have found here that if you
want to travel far and fast, you must travel light. In other words, you
must throw out the ballast.' That has set me to
thinking. I know that I can't do my best until I get right inside."
"So there is something you
want to
get rid
of--some ballast?"
"Exactly. That is it."
"Well," I said slowly, "I
wonder if
you realize that most of what is
bad in this world is only something good in the
wrong place."
"I don't understand," said the
other.
"Well, let us take for example
garbage that they
feed to chickens and pigs.
Garbage is all right in the
garbage
can, still better in the trough
where the pigs and chickens can eat it. But it
is in the wrong place if you keep it in the kitchen."
"That is true," said the boy.
"Suppose a selfish woman is so
jealous of her neighbors who own the
pigs that she won't put the garbage in the
trough, where they can get it, and so she conceals it in a big can
in the kitchen. Pretty soon that can is filled and she has to buy
another, and then another and another, till the
whole kitchen is filled with garbage cans. That would be bad, wouldn't
it?"
"You are sure telling me!"
exclaimed
the boy.
"In the same way, suppose you
have a
lot of energy and you keep it shut
in for your own selfish uses, it becomes cruelty, doesn't it? And
thrift shut in for your own self becomes
covetousness; love used for selfish gratification becomes lust;
self-confidence that eats in on itself becomes
arrogance, and so on.
Do you get me?"
"I sure do. But how can a
fellow get
rid of some
of those things? How can we empty out the
garbage?"
I looked around. My eye fell
on the
closed window.
"I'll tell you," I said
rising. "To
make the
thing very simple--very simple and easy, suppose
you hand me these things you have shut up in yourself and let me just
toss them out the window."
"I'll be only too glad to." It
was
like a sigh.
"Sweep the old barn out into
the
garden," I said
as I threw wide the window, "and let the Good
Gardener convert it all to His use and service." I paused and looked
out a few minutes, then added, "There, it is all
gone," and I slammed down the window. I went back
to the boy.
"I am not sure whether you
caught
all I was
driving at," I remarked.
The boy seized my hand and
said with
feeling, "I
am sure that I did, coach.
Thanks an awful lot." And he
vanished down the hall.
That night I said to my wife,
"I am
going up to
see our basketball team play. They have lost all
their games, but tonight they are going to play the champions of the
state, on which team there are two all-state
players, whom it is worth the price of the admission to watch.
We will probably lose by a big score."
Down the floor came the
all-state
players. No one
seemed able to stop them.
Under our basket I noticed the
boy
who had been in my room that
afternoon.
Suddenly he shot between the
two
players, intercepted the ball,
dribbled down the floor and made a basket. When
the game ended that night, that championship team all combined
had made twenty-one points; the boy who had come to my room,
single-handed
had made twenty-three points.
He later became the all-around
champion track
athlete, and made the all-state football team.
When he graduated, he came to my room and said, "There was certainly a
big
load of ballast taken off my shoulders when I came in this room several
years ago.
Everything has gone
wonderfully
since then--my
athletics, my social life and my studies."
He paused in the doorway and
said,
in a tone I shall never forget, "But
there was a big barn to clean--a big barn to
clean."
That spring I was invited to
the
University of
Wisconsin to talk to the track team.
The boys came in their track
suits
to the new fieldhouse where the talk
was to be given. I did not talk about winning
games; I talked simply of the need of throwing out the ballast and
the value of cooperation and teamwork. When I had finished, a handsome
chap, slightly bow-legged, came up, grasped my
hand and said, "I want to build those principles
into my life." A few weeks later I read in the morning paper that the
Big Ten Indoor Field meet would be held that day
and that the championship lay between Ohio, Illinois
and Iowa. The morning paper the next day read, "The surprise of the
meet was the way Wisconsin ran away with the
meet, led by a little bow-legged chap they couldn't stop."
What particular ballast is
especially demoralizing and destructive to
success in business? Let us try to name a few.
Some of these might be disloyalty, dishonesty, discord,
injustice, criticism, cynicism, jealousy, fear, anxiety, doubt,
distrust, gloom.
Perhaps one of the vices that
blocks
prosperity
most of all is jealousy. A business man who
"draws" prosperity to himself said to me one day, "Do you want to know
the secret for success? It is to rejoice in the
prosperity of others. I am surrounded by friends who
are always failing in business. They all have one fault in common.
Whenever they hear of another man succeeding
they become jealous. Whenever they read of a person inheriting
a small fortune they growl about the unfairness of fate. On the other
hand, when I read of someone coming into money,
I rejoice. I share in his happiness just as I do when I read
a novel and share in the happiness of the hero."
So I say, cast out your
jealousy
along with your
egotism, your drunkenness and all your other bad
habits. If you would travel far and fast, travel light!
"Let me illustrate what I mean
by
the danger of
one little improper thought," said Walter
Russell to a group of salesmen he was training. "A nationally known
real estate man, who was considered one of the
best salesmen in New York, had a client for a hundred
thousand dollar cooperative apartment in one of my buildings. The
client asked him to come to his house one night
in reference to the sale. This meant the cancellation of theater
tickets by the salesman. He said to me: 'I've got to go up and sell
that man an apartment because I need the money,
but I do wish the old fossil would pick daytime instead
of nights!"'
"To me that attitude of mind
was a
shock and I
told him that his sale was impossible because
that thought would get across to his client and prevent the sale. And
it did. He reported to me that the sale was off
for good, but I knew better, for I closed the sale
the next morning myself."
"Irreverence for even the
slightest
detail of any
element of any work of man keeps it from
becoming a masterpiece. That irreverent thought was not just one
thought of an impatient moment. It started years
ago when that man began to build himself into the kind
of man who could think such a thought regarding a work of his own
creation."
Yes, let us throw out the ballast.
The Secret of
Power in
Business
by Glenn Clark
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