7 Dark Roses - Free Audio ebooks

“Do you mean that a man has to be a penny pincher to be

a success?” he wanted to know.

I replied that what might seem to be penny-pinching at

one level might well loom as a large-scale economy at

another. I mentioned the example of the giant U.S.

corporation that recently made a study of the contents of

the wastebaskets in its administrative offices.

Each night for a week, a team of workers emptied the

waste receptacles and sorted out the usable items of com-

pany property which had been tossed into them by the

firm’s employees during the day. By computing the value of

such minor items as paper clips, rubber bands, erasers,

pencils, and so on which had been discarded during the

week and multiplying the total by 52, company officials

discovered that more than $30,000 was being wasted—

literally thrown away—each year!

Another firm operating a fleet of trucks saved $15,000

annually on its gasoline bills just because an alert

executive noticed that drivers were filling their fuel tanks

to overflowing at the company gas pumps and that gasoline

remaining in hose nozzles was allowed to drip onto the

ground.

In one of my own companies, a bright junior executive

burned much midnight oil to de

vise a shortcut in a produc

tion operation which saved less than a half a cent per unit,

but added up to a total year

ly saving of over $25,000—

more than twice his own salary. Last year, he also reduced

over-all costs by 20 percent and increased production by 12

percent in his own department, This young man quite

definitely has what I term The Millionaire Mentality. He is,

incidentally, no longer a

junior

executive. I do not hesitate

to predict that he will reach the top and make his millions

in record time.

In this day and age, almost every business firm has to

fight a constant battle against rising costs. More than ever

before in history, the emphasis has to be on reducing costs

and increasing production. There is absolutely no room in

today’s business world for even the most junior executive

who has a postal clerk’s outlook—but there is an insatiable

and ever-growing need for executives who possess or will

develop Millionaire Mentalities. Faced with spiraling costs

and shrinking profit margins, many firms have begun to

weed out the former and give greater latitude and oppor-

tunity to the latter.

In my own companies, we have instituted a program of

“early retirement” to rid ourselves of the personnel dead-

wood which has been allowed to collect over the years—

and which, inevitably, collects in almost any business firm.

Several hundred executives and employees have been

compulsorily retired well before reaching the normal

retirement age. The criterion for selecting those to be

retired has been their actual

value to the companies. In

brief, the question asked in each case was whether the

individual was productive, cost-conscious and profit-

minded.

True, the cost of retiring these people and of paying

them pensions years before they were due to receive them

is very high. But we have found that the cost is

significantly less than the cost of keeping them on our

payrolls, where they not only draw full pay, but cause more

harm than good, producing losses instead of profits.

The man with a Millionaire Mentality is not a penny

pincher and money-grubber. If he is an executive, he

watches costs and tries to reduce them—and strives to in-

crease production and sales and thus profits—in every way

he can because he has the interests of the company, its

shareholders and employees at heart. He knows that the

healthier the company, the better its profit picture, the

more those shareholders and employees will benefit.

It is more than a figure of speech to say that an

executive holds the stockholders’ investments and the

employees’ jobs in his trust.

To discharge those trusts, he

must direct every effort to insure that the company makes

a fair profit—one not only large enough for it to continue in

business, but also large enough for it to take advantage of

opportunities for expansion. An executive who understands

this and acts accordingly is already well on his way to

establishing the frame of mind that produces The

Millionaire Mentality.