Business 101 From the Godfather

Clemenza: "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

Sollozzo: "I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense."

Tom Hagan: "Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news immediately. "

Michael Corleone: "Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgement."

Don Corleone: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

The Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin

I had the good fortune to read the following essays by Benjamin Franklin at a young, impressionable age. They both contain remarkable good sense.

Advice to a Young Tradesman

The Whistle

The Witch of Wall Street

Hetty Green (1834-1916) was possibly the most wealthy woman from the Gilded Age. Her advice is from a chapter "Counsels of Successful Men" in a book Success and How to Win It, published in 1904.

1. Invest in real estate. Buy a house for $5,000 that can soon be sold for $6,000.
2. Be satisfied with a profit the proportion of which corresponds to the size of the investment.
3. Success is a stranger to imitation. People with money to invest should pay no attention to the doings of others but look on things from their own point of view.
4. The goal of success is not always reached by the roughest road. The path is an easy one to find. That is why so many people miss it.

Counsel and Caution

Dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff that life is made of. -- Franklin

Seest thou a man diligent in business, he shall stand before kings. -- Solomon

It is worth a thousand pounds a year to have the habit of looking on the bright side of things. -- Dr. Samuel Johnson

Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed. -- Sydney Smith

The truest wisdom is resolute determination. -- Napoleon.

The Entrepreneur

Business has in all ages past led nations onward in the march of civilizations. It's a royal leader that conquers the world without staining its hands in human blood. Instead of marking its course with ruined harvests, burning villages, and smoking heaps of once blooming cities, as the demon war, it leaves behind growing towns, populous cities, and flowing rivers, that bear the wealth and products of industrious millions.

This is the day of the entrepreneur. His restless, dauntless spirit pushes the pioneer in new and unknown regions. Hr breaks the praries and makes the desert bloom. The mountains yield to him their gold, the sea its treasure.

Entrepreneurs build our cities and rear our manufactories. They whiten the oceans with their cruisers and blacken the heavens with their jets. They push their roads and railroads across distant lands and lift their business palaces until they pierce the clouds.

Who would not be an entrepreneur? The physician trades his medical skill, the lawyer his ingenious tongue, the preacher his sermons, the teacher his instructions, the merchant his wares, the mariner his cargo, the farmer his produce.

The smallest beginning, followed by certain, strong, advancing steps, secures the grandest success. The lack of capital ought not to deter the ambitious youth from going into business. Most of the world's rich men and women have started in liufe with no other capital than their brains. The main thing is to get to work at something and to grow. The goddess of fortune must be wooed to be won. She smiles upon the poor boy as well as the monarch. At one time, she fixes her eye upon the beggtar boy as he asks for food from door to door, to be repulsed everywhere. She takes his hand and leads him up as if by magic through the various grades of society until she establishes him in a place and fills hi coffers with gold. She beckons with friendly hand only the intelligent, the virtuous, the brave, the good, the industrious, who kneel at her alter and breath their supplications there. This illustrates the simple truth too often lost sight of by the world. It is that favors go where they belong.

Fortune favors the brave, and the entrepreneur who would rise must climb. The stepping stones that lead up to the temple of prosperity are hewn for all by the unseen hand of God into the rock of eternal truth.