1. How It Started

Let’s get one thing straight. This book is 100% fact. There are no suppositions or "possibles" in it. It was written for a single purpose, and addressed to a certain individual. The fact that you bought the book makes you that individual. How­ever, if you are timid, or negative, this book will not help you in the least. It's all right for you to be lazy—my kind of lazy— which was the laziness of a man who was willing to work at a thing dedicatedly so that he could enjoy laziness later and longer and in delicious, sweet idleness. But if you are too lazy to work at making your million, read no further. Go back and enjoy your laziness. I have no quarrel with it. This just isn't your cup of tea.

Necessarily this book will seem autobiographical. In a sense it is. That means it has got to be about me, and I hope you'll bear with that. I won't inflict any more of my personal history upon you than is necessary to give you a full background for the better understanding of my successes and failures—so that you will be able to spot the temptations that led me to some whop­ping mistakes—and so that you will learn the signals that say "This Way Up" to guide you to your million.

Perhaps the personal history will help you in another im­portant phase of our undertaking—showing you how to make your million. If you see how poor I was, how little I had by special training, education, experience, or even advice, and above all, how little money I had to start with, you will be more likely to feel, "Heck! if Bob could do it with what he had, so can II" If we accomplish that, we’ve come a long way toward success. When you believe you can do it, you have a big ad­vantage. If you don't quite believe it, you must at least keep an open mind, and be willing to be convinced by your own experience. Ill do the rest, using your hands, mind and heart.

How do I know I can show you how to make your million? Simple. I've done it in many cases. Some years ago Arthur C. came in to talk to me. He had come over from the old country and worked in a chain store as a fruit and vegetable man. He made $17 per week. His lunch usually consisted of a discarded tomato that had the rotten side sliced off and a roll. Total cost, 2#. Arthur said to me, "Bob, I want to do what you are doing. Will you help me?" Until then it had never occurred to me that the things I had learned could be taught to another and that he could do the same thing. I wondered if this was possible as I replied, "OK, Arthur, here's how you begin." Ten years later, Arthur was close to his first million and today has far sur­passed it. And Arthur is only one of the many! By the way, don't worry about living as frugally as Arthur did. He didn't have to for long, after making his start under my guidance. After Arthur there were many others.

It IS feasible for any sincere man or woman who is steadfast in purpose, and is free of the 3 cardinal faults, Timidity, Nega-tiveness and (immediate) Laziness to learn how and DO IT! Here's the suggestion that I urge upon you. Let's make the right start now. It is, in simple words: Determine to Believe. Make up your mind now to push doubt aside every time it rears its head! Doubt is the one thing that will certainly cloud your viewpoint in all that is written here. Your absorption of the con­sents of this book will be impaired and the physical results seri­ously slashed. You virtually bar success forever.

Let's tackle our task.

Sunday was a day of rest in our house. We took to our bikes, although where I got the energy for 80 mile bike rides I still can't understand when I see my 6-foot sons take the car to go two blocks. When I went to bed, I would dream before dropping off to sleep. Since my working day was devoted to the pursuit of money, my natural dreams of castles-in-air concerned acquiring a great deal of it in a less painfully laborious way. I would en­vision the beautiful homes we passed along Commonwealth Avenue as we roared through the trees in the open streetcars to Norumbega Park. Somebody had the money to live in them, I reasoned, and they'd acquired that money some way. I was going to find that way and use it. I had a goal. I wanted to have an income of $200 a week. That seemed a princely income. There were hundreds of plans evolved in those half-sleeping hours whereby that $200 would be spent. The imagined fun was ten times greater than the reality.

There was a seemingly unimportant thing in my childhood that had a powerful influence on my later life in the making of my million. On occasional Sundays, my father would take me to visit Aunt Toby in Brighton. Aunt Toby would often remark, "We've been living here 38 years and we pay $30 a month and that landlord hasn't spent one cent on this place!"

Address yourself to that remark with your most attentive eye and mind!

Mark it well, for here lies the basis of all that you are to learn in this book. The figures that Aunt Toby had named interested me but mildly at first. It only took a few minutes to multiply $30 a month by 12 months. Then $360 by 38 years. Could that be right? Thirteen thousand six hundred eighty dollars? Aunt Toby had paid $13,680 just to occupy that flat? And she had nothing material to show for it but a sizeable collection of rent receipts. Father confirmed the facts and figures. Then I asked him what the whole 6-family building was worth. "Oh, about $8,000." What expenses had the landlord had? 'Well, the taxes are about $100 a year." The thirteen thousand promptly dropped to $10,680. What else? "Water, insurance, repairs, mortgage." But figure it as you may, one glaring fact stood out. Aunt Toby had paid for the building during her stay there, and she was only one of six tenants!!

These figures and facts whirled in my mind for months. I was never to forget them. I felt certain that this was the way to my million.

Nothing has happened since then to change that conviction.

Before we leave Aunt Toby, it is highly significant that we examine minutely the implications of another question that I'd ask my father. "If Aunt Toby isn't satisfied with the flat, why has she lived there all these years?"

He replied with a shrug, "Oh, they all gripe, but they all stay. It costs money to move, and she wouldn't do any better any­way."

I never forgot that.

Thirty years later I was checking the title of another build­ing, just like the one Aunt Toby lived in, but much older and shabbier. I ran across the name of a former owner, one Mrs. McGee, for the tenth time in checking titles of these properties. Someone had told me that Joe M. was a descendant of the Mc-Gees, and I asked him about them. He told me of these McGees. They'd come over from Ireland, poor and illiterate. Mrs. McGee had set about to acquire property while McGee worked at a menial job. They saved as much of the poor pay as they could to invest in still another "Aunt Toby" building. Joe quoted one of Mrs. McGee's favorite remarks. We shall see later that she was very wise, and we shall see why they became very wealthy. This remark will be an important guide of policy for you as it has been for me. There was profound wisdom in it. When word reached her that a tenant was dissatisfied or had asked for an improvement, with or without the threat of mov­ing if refused, she would reply, "They stays to suit themselves, and if they don't be suited they goes."

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