129 year old business advice! Still stands true!

I was looking for a certain book last weekend and was having a dickens of a time finding it.  I sifted through countless boxes of books I had stored in the closet, and scanned over several shelves full of books.  I couldn’t find that dratted book anywhere!

Don’t I end up finding the thing on a bookshelf in the office?  I didn’t notice it because it wasn’t where books normally are, and it was laying down, near a stack of paper.

Bad, bad! This is what I am trying to avoid!

Of course in the process, I took about 20 books from their storage area, and added them to the hundred or so books currently dwelling on the shelves in the office.

I can’t help it- books are to me what jewelry is to some woman…I just can’t get enough!

I have a hard time getting rid of them, too!

One of these books really piqued my interest.

It’s called “700 Ways to make money!”

Subtitle: Without Capital

Another subtitle….”The Art of Money-Getting or, Hints and Helps How to Make a Fortune”

It was copyrighted in 1882 by J.S. Ogilivie…that’s all it said and it looked like a hand stamp.

I had purchased it years ago at a used book sale being held at the library where I worked.  I thought it was cool because it was so old and I wanted to see what principles it held regarding business. I tucked it away and never really looked at it.

So today I was flipping though it.

The first page is titled: How to Secure a good business. I read through it, thinking my readers would get a kick out of this:

Business principles in the book:

• Man must not be above his business…all business is honorable that is honorably conducted
• There must be a willing cheerfulness to work…no drones are wanted in the world’s busy hive of industry
• Never wait for something to just “turn up”…but otherwise go to work and turn up something !
• A great fault with many young men is that they will only do some great and wonderful business, and because the great thing does not show up without effort, they do nothing!
• Poor deluded mortals! Looking for the end before they can discover a beginning!
• He must be persistent! Thousands of enterprises, great and small are started and fall through, simply because of lack of persistency..whatever business is started, stick with it through thick and thin and success must follow.
• He must be economical in his business and his living. A man who clears $10.00 a day and spends $11.00 a day will never realize a fortune.
• He must be enterprising, wide awake and he must advertise. He must never hide his light under a bushel. If he has business worth doing at all, it will pay to advertise by way or circulars and newspapers.

Then it goes on about printed material….

Is that amazing, or what?

Is it me, or does most of this still hold true today…of course we can add the Internet to the last one

So c’mom dear visitors, tell us what you think!

…Next post: a few ways they made money back in 1882!

Tags: advice, business, persistence