more important than success, and doing more moderate work probably leaves more room for joy. But a person who has worked twice as hard as his colleagues goes through life twice as fast, especially in advertising.

It's invariable. Of course, people differ in ability, but this is not as important as diligence. A person who does the work for two or three people will learn two or three times as much. He makes more mistakes and achieves greater success by learning from both. If I have risen above others in advertising or done more, it is not due to my exceptional talents, but due to my exceptional performance. This means that a person has sacrificed everything else in life in order to achieve excellence in his profession. Perhaps this also means that such a person should rather be pitied, but he should not be envied.

In one speech, I once said that I had worked in advertising for 70 years. According to the calendar, there are only 35 years, but if measured in ordinary working days and evaluate the amount of work performed, then in one year I lived two. Diligence and caution protected me from misfortune, and diligence made me who I am now.

Because of my father, we lived in poverty, which turned out to be another blessing. The father was the son of a priest. His ancestors were also clergy, brought up in poverty, so poverty was a natural state for him.

I owe a lot to poverty. Thanks to her, I lived among ordinary people whom God created in abundance. I got to know them, with their desires and aspirations, with their struggle for survival and frugality, with their simple manners. These ordinary people, whom I knew so intimately, later became my clients. When I speak to them, in person or in print, they recognize me as one of their own.

I'm sure I couldn't impress the rich because I don't know them. I never tried to sell what they buy. I'm sure I would fail trying to advertise Rolls-Royce, Tiffany & Company or Steinway pianos. I don't know the reaction of the rich. But I know ordinary people. I love talking to workers, studying the behavior of a housewife who has to count every cent, gain confidence and find out the needs of poor boys and girls. My words will be simple, my sentences short. Scientists may laugh at my style. The rich and conceited may laugh at the factors I use. But in millions of ordinary homes, ordinary people will read and buy.

They will immediately feel that the advertiser knows them. And for advertising, they make up 95% of consumers.

Poverty enriched me with experiences that taught me how to sell. If it weren't for poverty, I would never have become a door-to-door salesman. It was this work that opened my eyes to the nature of man and how he spends money. It's a great school. One of the finest advertisers America has ever had used to go out selling a product in person first before starting to advertise it in print. I know he sells for weeks, traveling from farm to farm to get the opinion of the farmers. I know he calls houses to see how women react.

I owe it to poverty that I never went to college. For four years I went through the school of practice, not the school of theory. I don't know anything of value that an advertiser could learn in college. I know about a lot of things they teach there, but the advertiser will have to forget them before he can get down to business. It seems to me that higher education is a minus for a person whose daily job is to reach out to ordinary people.

Of course, when I was in school, there were no courses in advertising, sales, or journalism. I'm sure it would be better if they didn't exist now. I have taken several of these courses. They were so confused and far from living practice that I was annoyed by all this. One day a man brought me a course in advertising taught at a famous technical school and asked me to improve it. When I got acquainted with this course, I told him: “Burn him. You have no right to occupy the brightest years of a young man, the most valuable years, with such nonsense. If he spends four years studying such theories, it will take him twelve years to forget them. After that, he will be so behind in his career that it will be too late to try to catch up with others.

I was angry and made a bad impression. But tell me, how can a professor who has spent his whole life in an educational monastery teach advertising or business practice? These items belong life school of real business. And there is no other way to master them. I have talked to hundreds of people about this topic. I met people who, being uneducated, endowed educated people with a certain halo. I've attended colleges, been in classes, listened to lectures. I was respectful because I myself come from an educated family. My sister and daughter are college graduates.

I am responsible for my words. I have observed many people with higher education in business. In the advertising agency that I run, even the messengers are educated people. Many of my clients have the same policy of hiring only college graduates. Their idea is to hire people with a background that employers don't have and that they feel so bad about. But I can't think of a single theory-trained person who has risen to a high position. Those who went through the practical business school had a huge advantage. When it comes to advertising, you can learn more in a week talking to farmers than in a year in a classroom.

I am grateful to Will Carlton for the influence that turned me away from the career of the priest. I was destined to become a priest. All my ancestors were them. My names were chosen from the book Who's Who in the Church. My family never doubted for a second that I would spend my life in the pulpit.

But they overdid it with training. My grandfather was a devout Baptist; my mother is a Scottish Presbyterian. They represented the hard side of religion. On Sunday afternoon I attended five services, and in the evenings I had to sit through boring sermons. I was often pinched to keep me awake. Sundays were terrible days. I was not allowed to walk. I couldn't read anything but the Bible and the Concordance. I spent days counting the words and letters in the Bible to confirm Concordance. Also, I was forced to read Pilgrim's Progress, which was no doubt not the way a boy wanted to go.

I had the impression that all the joys of life were sinful. I was taught that those who dance, play cards, or go to the theater are the minions of the devil. And those who read non-Sunday school books will go to hell.

Will Carlton was my father's college friend. He wrote "Over the hills to the poor house" and other famous ballads. The State of Michigan recently honored him by ordering schools to celebrate his birthday.

When I was 9 or 10 years old, Will Carlton gave lectures. Arriving in our city, he stopped at our house and found in it an ultra-religious atmosphere, unpleasant for a growing boy. Under the influence of one of his visits to us, he wrote a ballad and published it in City Ballads. It was called "There was no room for his heart." It was the young man's story to the sheriff on his way to jail. A story about a Presbyterian home where religion was bigotry. All this brought the boy to the crime. In his ballad, Will Carlton presented me as the victim of a religious tragedy and sent me a copy of the book.

This ballad had a greater influence on my future life than all the teachings of my family. I adored Will Carlton. I dreamed when I grew up to be as famous as him. Of course, I shared his attitude towards my home. And since such a person agreed with me, my own opinion took on additional weight. Since then, Will Carlton has been my guiding light. His rejection of religious fanaticism showed me for the first time that there is another side to life.

I continued to study to be a priest and became a preacher at the age of 17. At 18 I was preaching in Chicago. But the thoughts that Will Carlton engendered in me eventually made the life of a priest impossible for me.

There was another event that had a strong impact on me. My sister and I fell ill, and our mother nursed us. When we were recovering, she read us Uncle Tom's Cabin. Later, I found out that a performance under this name would be shown in our city by a touring troupe, and I agreed that I would distribute leaflets and receive several tickets for this. After much persuasion, my mother allowed us to watch this play.

There was a week left before the performance, and the days dragged on unbearably slowly. On the morning of a significant day, I got up at 4 o'clock. The day seemed endless. At 7 pm, my sister and I couldn't wait any longer, so we persuaded my mother to go to the town meeting early.

On the way we met a Presbyterian minister. He was an old bachelor who had long forgotten