The Templeton Plan

by Sir John Templeton

  Scanning is a must for anyone who hopes to be successful. There is far too much printed material in any given area for one person to digest in a single lifetime. You have to select whatever is most helpful. Proper scanning will allow you to increase your workload at least twofold. Also, proper scanning frees you from the drudgery of reading through long passages of material that aren’t related to your interests. Skip items that are trivial and read those of lasting significance.

  Because, as Korsaren said, “Work is the greatest remedy available for both mental and physical afflictions,” in adversity it is important to work even harder, as Templeton did as a Yale sophomore. Too many people take the attitude that there are no suitable jobs for them. If these same people became givers rather than getters, they would move ahead much faster. They should ask themselves, “What can I give of myself and my talents that will please someone?” They should not simply say, “Give me a job with a salary.”

  This applies particularly to the sales area. Hundreds of corporations are delighted to have sales representatives if they can pay them on a commission basis. If you want to get started on the success course, you should carefully choose the industry with which you feel a kinship. You should then approach a company in that field and say, “Don’t pay me anything. I’m not asking for a drawing account. Just let me sell your product.” Then, once on board, it’s up to you to give the job long hours and lots of enthusiasm. Remember, all the power of God within you is at work.

  Margaret Thatcher has offered a program in Britain that would be worth considering in the United States. By offering a valid start-up plan, the unemployed there are provided money to go into business for themselves. So much is allotted to the person wanting to open a shoeshine stand; a larger sum goes to the person opening a restaurant at the seashore. If those recipients of government funds work hard and are successful, they hire others and thus the unemployment rolls are reduced even more. Of course, the plan’s success—like that of almost every plan in life—depends on hard work.

  Another key to success, and one that John Templeton recommends and tries to use himself, is to take one day off each week and use that time to do something that is both totally different and spiritually uplifting. Call it your sabbath day. It need not be a Saturday or a Sunday. Even those who are not churchgoers should observe a sabbath day, working on spiritual growth or charity.

  As you climb toward success, striving each day and each hour to fulfill your goals, it is vital that you not neglect your sleep. John Templeton has worked long hours his entire life, putting in many fifteen-hour working days, six days a week. Yet he has tried to get seven hours of sleep a night. Without proper rest, energy flags. In some respects, his approach to life, even at a young age, matched the method of time and energy management discovered by the hardworking founder of Methodism, John Wesley. At the age of eighty-five, Wesley wrote in his Journal:

  I this day enter on my eighty-fifth year; and what cause have I to praise God, as for a thousand spiritual blessings, so for bodily blessings also!… To what cause can I impute this, that I am as I am? First, doubtless, to the power of God, fitting me for the work to which I am called, as long as He pleases to continue me therein; and, next, subordinately to this, to the prayers of His children.

  May we not impute it as inferior means,

  To my constant exercise and change of air?

  To my never having lost a night’s sleep, sick or well, at land or at sea, since I was born?

  To my having slept at command so that whenever I feel myself almost worn out I call it and it comes, day or night?

  To my having constantly, for about sixty years, risen at four in the morning?

  To my constant preaching at five in the morning, for about fifty years?

  To my having had so little pain in my life; and so little sorrow, or anxious care?

  Like Wesley, John Templeton has possessed a positive, success-oriented, stress-conquering frame of mind. Also like Wesley, Templeton learned at an early age that regular sleep, rest, and relaxation were essential for him to maintain a high level of performance in all his tasks.

  As a hard worker, you should form the habit of arriving at your office an hour early each day. Without telephone calls and other interruptions, you can accomplish in one hour what would take you two or three hours later in the day. Such early-bird behavior will help you to forge ahead in your career.

  In conclusion, money earned through hard work is money with meaning. For many people—perhaps for most—easy money is poison. There is a universal tendency to say, “Oh, if only I had $100,000 I would be so happy.” But if you study people who have amassed large sums of money easily, through gambling or winning the lottery or some fluke of fate, you will find that they are rarely satisfied.

  The answer? Easy money and hard-earned money are different currencies. Individuals who have learned to invest themselves in their work are successful.

  They have earned what they have. More than simply knowing the value of money, they know their own value. Those people are always the successful people.

  Before moving on to Step 8, make certain that you have absorbed the following points, which are indispensable as you climb toward success and happiness:

  An idea is only an idea until you subject it to hard work.

  Search for ways to turn problems into opportunities.

  Work as if your life were in peril.

  Carry your own library with you.

  Think two thoughts at once.

  Always go for the brass ring.

  Defer pleasure until the job is done.

  Build a reputation for delivering what you promised and, if possible, even more.

  STEP 8

  CREATING YOUR OWN LUCK

  ON THE SUBJECT of luck, John Templeton has this to say: “There are many people who feel that success depends on the flip of a coin. And, of course, chance is involved in anything we do—things like timing enter in, for instance. But good luck always seems to arrive when you’ve worked hard and prepared for success. Without preparedness and plenty of sweat, luck is just a word with no real application to reality.”

  Templeton has a collection of favorite quotations on the meaning of luck, from which he feels the success searcher can profit.

  Here’s the view of Victor Cherbuliez, French novelist and literary critic: “What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient but restless mind, of sacrificing one’s ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.”

  Philosopher Coleman Cox admitted: “I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.”

  The American poet Walt Whitman wrote these lines: “There’s a man in the world who is never turned down, wherever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers make hay; he’s greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there’s a welcoming hand—he’s the man who delivers the goods.”

  World-famous French chemist Louis Pasteur said: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

  Author Max O’Dell gave his definition of luck: “[It] means the hardships and privations which you have not hesitated to endure, the long nights you have devoted to work. Luck means the appointments you have never failed to keep; the trains you have never failed to catch.”

  Psychiatrist Edward C. Simmons provided this definition: “The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.”

  Joseph Addison, the English poet and essayist, stated: “I never knew an early rising, hardworking, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all the ill luck that fools ever dreamed of.”

  And, last, in the immortal words of Branch Rickey, the baseball entrepreneur: “Luck is the residue of design.”
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  To be a success, you have to understand that opportunity knocks only when—and if—you are searching for it. You can’t just sit idly by and wait for “the lucky breaks.”

  John Templeton gives this example: “In studying bargains, it pays to inquire into the values of things and estimate their worth carefully—both present and future worth. I happen to know something about semiprecious stones, and once when I was in Rio de Janeiro, I stopped in a jewelry store and asked the prices of uncut amethysts, the crystals that they brought in from the mines.

  “The store had a warehouse where they kept their uncut crystals. I persuaded them to drive me to the warehouse. I gazed at those beautiful objects, some of them as large as ten and twenty pounds. I asked the price; it was two dollars per pound and so I bought two tons of amethysts.

  “Now I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t prepared ahead of time. First, I had made myself knowledgeable enough to know that you couldn’t go wrong with the crystals at that price. Second, I had been thrifty enough so that I had cash on hand for purchases when I found them.

  “My company is still holding the crystals as a long-term investment. Having bought them in Brazil, I shipped them to a warehouse in Florida and they are there now. Eventually I’ll sell them—and for many, many times what I paid for them. After all, God isn’t making amethyst crystals very fast anymore.”

  What many people would call Templeton’s “luck” in buying the uncut crystals that will one day bring him a small fortune is actually an example of how men like John Templeton make opportunities happen. They are always prepared, always alert to market changes and to the people who govern the markets.

  The main ingredients of luck are hard work and proper planning, along with the exercise of common sense and imagination. Perhaps the perfect example of how you make your own luck comes from John Templeton’s early career as an investor. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, America had just gone through the worst depression in its history. There were more than a hundred companies whose shares had dropped below one dollar each on the New York and American stock exchanges.

  But Templeton, at age twenty-six, was alert to a fundamental economic reality: In wartime there is great demand for so many kinds of products that even the inefficient companies can make a profit. Although the United States wasn’t yet in the war, Templeton, who had done his homework carefully, was convinced that this country would be supplying the Allies and that we would most likely get involved in a direct way ourselves before too much time passed.

  Translating these broad conclusions about the economy into practical reality, he decided in September 1939 to buy $100 worth of every stock on the exchanges that was selling for no more than a dollar per share. To finance the venture, he borrowed $10,000 from his employer.

  At this point, it is important to note something about Templeton’s philosophy of debt. Borrowing money for personal expenses—for paying for a vacation trip, for example—was anathema to him. This instance was different, however, because it involved a business venture in which the borrowed funds would be used to make money.

  In other words, if he had borrowed for consumer purposes—say, to buy a new refrigerator or a car—the value of the object that he’d purchased would inevitably have depreciated. As a result, he would have had a debt to repay and no chance to make money from his purchase to cover that debt.

  But, in borrowing money for business purposes, he was gambling that the profit from his investment would greatly exceed the principal and interest he would be paying on the $10,000 debt to his employer. This was, by the way, the only time in his entire professional career that he ever borrowed, even for business reasons.

  There were two other factors that reduced the risk in the investment he was making. First of all, he had done thorough research during the previous two years on the performance of stocks selling for less than one dollar. And he had found that if their past records continued, it would be very unlikely that he would lose money. Second, through other wise investments and a stock-purchase plan he had with his company, his personal investment portfolio was now worth more than $30,000. So he had enough assets to cover the $10,000 he had borrowed if his theory proved wrong.

  With this analysis firmly in place, he asked his former boss, Dick Piatt of Fenner & Beane, to place the order. Piatt said that the order was most unusual. He warned Templeton that he would do so reluctantly because thirty-seven of the companies on his list were in bankruptcy.

  “That doesn’t matter.” Templeton told him. “Buy everything, whether it’s in bankruptcy or not.”

  Many might call this a high-risk move, especially when he was gambling with borrowed money. But he had done his homework well, as usual. He knew there was a chance that his scheme might fail, but he also knew that he had gathered the information and analyzed it as thoroughly as anyone could. His risk, in other words, was a reasonable one, with the odds stacked as much as possible in his favor.

  The result? Of the 104 companies whose stock he had bought, only 4 turned out to be worthless. Within a year, young Templeton was able to pay back all the money he had borrowed. After he had sold all the stocks, an average of four years after he had bought them, his original $10,000 had swelled to $40,000. And there were those who called him lucky!

  Templeton says of that experience: “I recall one stock in particular, a preferred stock of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. It had been issued in the 1920s to the public at a $100 a share, paying $7 a year cash dividend. But because of the depression, the company had gone into bankruptcy and stopped paying dividends. The shares went down in price until, at the time I placed the order, they were selling at twelve cents. So my one $100 bought 800 shares of Missouri Pacific Preferred.

  “Then when we entered the war, railroads were needed. Missouri Pacific began to earn money again. The twelve-cent share shot up to $5 and I sold it, thinking I was wise. But as it turned out, I was only half wise. The price continued to climb until it reached $105 a share. So I sold too soon but, even so, I earned forty times my money.

  “The moral is, don’t enter into any business venture unless, and until, you’re fully prepared for it. I’m not aware of anyone else who did what I did. Not everyone had studied American stocks enough to realize why they were so cheap. Or perhaps no one had combined this knowledge with an analysis of wartime economics; therefore they didn’t know that, in a major war, it’s the most depressed companies that come back to life with the largest percentage gains.”

  Templeton has used his formidable knowledge, born of wide reading and research—some would call it his “luck”—in many other spectacular deals throughout his career. In 1985 an investor from New York who is an expert in Argentinian stocks observed to Templeton that because of Argentina’s serious inflation and political instability, prices of their stocks were remarkably depressed. If their stocks were calculated in terms of American dollars, you could buy 100 percent of all the corporations listed on the Buenos Aires exchange for eight-tenths of a billion dollars.

  Templeton knew immediately that the same computation for American stocks would be over $2 trillion—in other words, 2,500 times as much value. It was clear that the Argentinian stocks were absurdly underpriced. Within an hour, Templeton agreed to put up the capital, opened an account with a bank in Argentina, and bought $800,000 worth of Argentinian stocks at bargain prices. Within four months, prices rose 70 percent. Again, he was a big winner. A lucky winner?

  In Matthew 7:7–8, Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

  Asking means trying. It means giving your best effort under good as well as adverse circumstances. Seeking means using your facilities to the highest degree. If you seek, if you ask, if you try, if, most of all, you give all of yourself to any enterprise honestly and without stint or qualification, you are bound to have luck. You will find succes
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  Luck, in the final analysis, is what you make of all the options available. Always be prepared, make certain that your homework is done and that your ends are worthy, and the chances are you will be the luckiest of the lucky.

  After completing Step 8, ask yourself these questions:

  Do you believe in luck, and if you do, how would you define it?

  Are you a lucky person? Luckier than most? Unluckier than most?

  Would you agree that the person who works hard, intelligently, and creatively is bound to have more luck than the lazy and unimaginative person?

  As you study Step 8, keep the following principles in mind. Luck will come to those who:

  Work hard and plan carefully.

  Are alert to opportunities.

  Use common sense and their creative imagination.

  Are willing to take calculated risks.

  STEP 9

  UTILIZING TWO PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS

  JOHN TEMPLETON believes that if you practice honesty and perseverance, the numbers will come up for you more than they do for the big lottery winners. Only your fortune will be based not on pure chance but on a solid foundation.

  If there is a leading clue to Templeton’s outstanding success, it is that he always finishes what he begins. He perseveres. Unfortunately, the world is full of people who start a project and then, as it presents difficulties, either postpone it or abandon it entirely. Thus they have gained nothing from the work they did.

  Some people will even go so far as to finish 90 percent of a project and then, distracted, move on to something else. Try to train yourself not to commit to a project lightly; then, once committed, finish it! Excellent results and a solid reputation come from the follow-through.

  When discussing perseverance, Templeton has a favorite saying: “The difficult we do immediately. The impossible may take a little longer.” An exaggeration, of course, as he is the first to admit, but there is truth in the maxim nonetheless. When you undertake a project, don’t be diverted, don’t let yourself grow discouraged, but carry it through to completion and assume responsibility for your own results.