Jade Jean Blog

“Good morning,” I said. “You all look so fit in your jogging duds.” They sat on the bleachers beside a football field in Shaw Park in the middle of Clayton, Missouri. The early morning sun bathed the surroundings in a warm mist. The green leaves shimmered. It was going to be a beautiful day.

“Did you all sleep OK?” “I was exhausted,” Mary exclaimed, “but my brain wouldn’t quit!” “Comes with the territory,” I replied. “I still can’t believe this is happening!” Nora added.
“Before the end of today, maybe you’ll wish it wasn’t.”

We all laughed. “This morning let’s talk some more about the brain. The brain is the most powerful computer in the world—your personal Einstein. Yesterday we learned how to program this computer by setting specific, desirable goals with realistic deadlines. Today you’ll learn how to stretch the grooves in your brain in order to use more of this marvelous tool on your shoulders. What do I mean by ‘stretch the grooves’?

“Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, ‘Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never returns to its original dimension.’

“One day, after a long jog, I happened to glance at the soles of my jogging shoes. There, stuck in the grooves or treads on the bottom of my shoes, were dozens of little pebbles. Waxing a bit philosophical that day, I wondered to myself, ‘Why are these pebbles stuck in the treads of my shoes?’

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

Karen smiled at this memory. Philip then tried selling other things—roses on street corners—with some success. It wasn’t like the old days, but he was bringing in a sixtyor seventy-dollar-a-day profit.

But none of his family ever appreciated his selling skills. His brothers ridiculed him. “Get yourself a real job,” they chided. “Don’t be a bum selling roses and balloons on the street corner.” He ignored them. They could not know how much he enjoyed the thrill of the sale, thefreedom of being on his own with no one to tell him what to do. When things were going right, it was the most exciting feeling in the world.

As in the fall of 1982, when the St. Louis Cardinals made it into the World Series. The series went seven games. On the last night of the last game Philip gambled and bought two hundred pennants for fifty cents apiece from a wholesaler. He knew that if the Cards lost, he wouldn’t be able to sell them all. Nobody wants a pennant from a loser. He positioned himself outside the stadium by the statue of Stan Musial, his ear glued to the transistor radio. Luck was with him. St. Louis beat the Milwaukee Brewers by a score of 6-3. The fans poured out, jubilant. They mobbed him. He sold one pennant for four dollars. Another fellow wanted ten—eight dollars apiece. He stuffed the money in his pockets until they bulged. If only the Cardinals would win the World Series every day of the year, he would be rich!

“Those were good days,” Karen thought to herself as they pulled up in front of their apartment on Leduc. She had been with him that night at the stadium. And she was with him now.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

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“I’m goin’ into the group home,” he said. “It’s a home for delinquent boys. I’m gonna be gone for three months. I’ll call you.” “What for? What’d you do?” He never told her the whole story.

Even in the group home, his entrepreneurial talents flourished. He’dbuy a pack of cigarettes for 95 cents and sell it to the other boys for $1.50 on time—until they got their weekly allowances of money. He became so successful at it that the home employees forbade him to do it.

After his stint in the group home, Karen begged him to go straight. By this time, he was a father feeling the responsibility to provide.

He turned to selling balloons. The principles were still the same buy low, sell high. Except this time it was legal. Karen remembered the first day they sold balloons together. It was the first time he had ever tried to sell a legitimate product. They rented a helium tank and inflated dozens of balloons and took the city bus to the arch monument on the banks of the Mississippi. Philip gave Karen pointers on how to sell and what to say, but it was she who sold her bundle of balloons even before they made it to the riverfront.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

At the age of thirteen, he learned a better way to earn money. He couldn’t steal the stuff, but he sure could sell it. His friends would rip things off at the mall—a stereo, some women’s clothes, a camera or a television—and he’d buy it all for a hundred dollars and peddle it down at the black housing projects of St. Louis. After a while, he developed a regular clientele. He’d call around and find someone who wanted to buy a hot refrigerator. Then he’d flag down a truck driving through the neighborhood and pay the driver five or ten dollars to deliver it for him. It was good money for a young teenager. Sometimes as much as five hundred dollars a week—enough to buy him a gold tooth, fancy clothes and to give some extra money to his mother.

She, like Karen, never suspected a thing. She thought he was working a part-time job after school. It wasn’t until Philip had been arrested that they learned where the extra money came from. By then, Karen was pregnant with Marcus. She was only fifteen. Philip came to see her.

“I’ve been busted,” he told her. “Busted? What’re you talking about?” She acted surprised but she knew that he’d been flirting with trouble. Her friends at school had warned her. “Philip is a bum. He’s gonna leave you. He’s goin’ around with the wrong crowd.” She didn’t want to believe them. He was always so considerate when he was with her. But the stories about him always got back to her.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

As Philip and Karen walked out of the Bonenberger home into the humid Missouri night, they looked up and down the street. It was a white neighborhood. Neat, white houses lined both sides of the street, their lawns immaculate. A jet passed overhead, reminding them how close they were to the airport.

They got into their car—a brown Chevrolet that they had borrowed from Karen’s father. Karen observed her husband as they drove. He was bubbling with enthusiasm.

“He’s picking it up so fast,” she thought. As long as she had known him, he had been a budding entrepreneur. They first met when he was fourteen and she was twelve. He always seemed to have money. Or the knack to find it when necessary. And he had a way with words. In the ninth grade, he was on the student council and debating team. A straight A student. Sort of a square until his friends started razzing him. To placate them he began smoking and hanging out with the wrong crowd. At first, his gang was just involved in mischief— breaking windows, vandalizing, cafeteria fights. Just to be cool. Then they gravitated to more serious things, like stealing hubcaps, tires, carburetors. But stealing scared Philip to death. Couldn’t even shoplift a pack of gum without the look of guilt on his face giving him away.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“How could I know, when I received this letter, that Nothing Down was a winner? If I had chosen to accept this failure, Nothing Down would never have become the all- time largest-selling financial hardcover book in the history of pub lishing.

“Therefore, if you refuse to accept failure, you cannot fail. You may fall down a cliff or two. But you must learn to get up, dust yourself off and keep climbing.

“Only those who are willing to fail again and again deserve to make it to the top. You three haven’t even begun to fail enough to be worthy of success. You may have to call dozens, maybe hundreds, of sellers before you find your diamond. There will be problems to solve, obstacles to overcome. You’ll be rejected and defeated at every turn for weeks on end. But if you persist, you’ll make it. And won’t it feel great to stand on top of that mountain?!”

Mary could hardly contain herself, “When I buy my first property, I think I’m going to fly away.” “You’ll look back down the mountain and reme mber all your failures with a smile. They will seem only a small price to pay for what youenjoy. And, then, the greatest and most misunderstood wealth secret of them all will be clear to you.”

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“A few years ago I bound my file of rejection letters into this leather book. I entitled it The Many Failures of Robert G. Allen. While there aremillions of my other books in print, there is only one copy of this one. It is one of my most prized possessions. Why? It constantly reminds me that from the ashes of failure grew my greatest success.

“Where would I be right now if my prayers had been answered—if Procter and Gamble had hired me in 1974? Probably still be in Cincinnati making a nice living—saying to the world, ‘Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.’ But because I failed to get that job, I was forced to look in a different direction, to take a road less traveled. And where has it led me? To a life of financial freedom. Today I earn more and work less than even the president of Procter and Gamble, and I wouldn’t consider trading places with him for the world.

“You see, sometimes God answers prayers by closing doors, not by opening them. And not till years later do we see the wisdom of our failures—when the fruits of our failures become evident. We have to learn to defer judgment until the final verdict. You’ must learn to see the good in every setback. If you do, your failures will not be so painful. Failure, in fact, will no longer be failure, only feedback. “For example, look at this letter dated July 7, 1978, from St. Martin’s Press turning down the manuscript of a book I had written entitled Nothing Down.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“Do you know what kept me going during the hard times? It was those rejection letters. They made me mad. I put them in a special file and vowed that I would be a success even if some of America’s greatest companies thought differently.

“But I still didn’t have a job. I shared my predicament with a successful local real estate developer, who offered me a job selling recreational land. At first I rejected the idea. I felt it was beneath me. ‘I have a masters degree in business administration. What will my colleagues think?!’

“But necessity got the better of my pride. That summer, as I worked beside this man, I learned lessons I could not have learned any other way. With the confidence gained there, I bought my first investment property, and my second, and then my third … and so on. You know the rest of the story.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH

“Things were looking bleak, but I had one ace in the hole. Procter and Gamble—the company at the top of my list and the giants of consumer marketing, makers of Crest, Ivory, Charmin and Tide—invited me to come to their headquarters for interviews with the top brass. My interviews in Cincinnati—on April 11, 1974—were thrilling. I fell in love with the people, the company and the city. After so much rejection, I felt I’d finally found a home. I flew home and waited for the offer to come in the mail.

“On April 15 the letter came. I should have known not to open it. Nothing good ever happens on April 15. This is the day that Lincoln died, the day the Titanic sank and the day our taxes are due. Nevertheless, I ignored these ominous warnings and ripped open the envelope to find a letter from Michael R. Walker, the personnel supervisor of Procter and Gamble, informing me that they didn’t want me.

“I’ll never forget that black day. I couldn’t understand it! Had God let me down? Why wasn’t He answering my prayers? Opening the doors for me? I had no idea where I was going to turn. The semester ended. The few of us without job offers felt like dregs at the bottom of the barrel. One by one, the last of the responses from my thirty hand-picked companies trickled in. Ford, Hallmark Cards, Macy’s and General Electric. All said no. I still had no job.

Taken From:The ROAD TO WEALTH