Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

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Increase Fivefold

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina: What is the Monday Morning Message?

“Increase Fivefold? Say, it will take a life time to do that.” All right, let it take a life time, but begin at once— this very week.

Here’s a little example for you. Suppose you had twenty-eight years to accomplish some definite ideal that would live after you and make the world a better place than you found it. Which of the following would you rather do?

1. Be a preacher and build a church from nothing to 10,000 members.
2. Found and direct a college.
3. Establish and operate an orphanage, and also a home for widows.
4. Edit a monthly magazine of far-reaching influence.
5. Write and publish forty books.

Wouldn’t any one of these five be a life achievement for a really great man? But listen to this: — All five of these lasting works were packed into a short twenty-eight years by one man — the great Charles H. Spurgeon.
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Up or Down?

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

Ever since the day we were born influences, forces, habits, have been fastening half hitches on us and tugging at our lives. Some pull up, some down. Some tug stronger with the years, others weaker. Sometimes we call upon the sturdy lifting fellows to pull us up, only to find the lowering habits holding us back.

You, yourself, know better than anyone else what habits are holding you down. How about cutting loose from one of those down-pulling imps today?
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Leaders

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

Leaders simply fascinate me. I read about them, talk about them. I sidle up to them, hoping some Leadership stuff will rub off on me.

To get a job done, find a Leader.

To distribute a product, sell some Leaders. Few people insist on what they want. A Leader does. Dealers carry what a relatively small number of their Leading customers want. Others follow the Leaders.

A shrewd observer said that when Irene Castle bobbed her hair the sub-debs of Manhattan mimicked her, and finally the buds in Battle Creek and Bloomington followed her example. The skirt line was raised first by a few Leaders on the boulevards — and then on Main Street.

What’s the biggest thing you want to accomplish this week? Put it down on paper. Then pick your Leaders at the specific point of contact to do the job. Your ability to do this will determine just what kind of a Leader you are.

Who are the leaders who can help your business? [Read more…]

Living on Turnips

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

During the war, a little community in Germany exhausted its food supply, and was forced to live on turnips. Turnips raw, turnips cooked, turnip soup, turnips disguised in every conceivable way, but only turnips to eat. On an unbalanced, turnip diet, the power of resistance was reduced to a minimum. Statistics from that community showed from four to five times more tuberculosis in the lives of the children who lived on turnips then than there was in a group of children of the same age before the war.

Are you living on turnips—movies, pleasure, loss of sleep, lack of study, no power to concentrate? Life’s program must build up a surplus against a day of need. If you are eating too many turnips, better look out. Why not lay off and take a little more Ralston, Milk, Butter and SPINACH! [Read more…]

Making the Most Out of the Least

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

Seven hundred and fifteen years before Christ, Numa Pompilius, king of Rome, increased the calendar from ten to twelve months. He did this by adding two new months—January and February.

By and by along came Julius Caesar, and July was named for him. Then when Augustus Caesar was the big boss he had a bit of conceit too, and wanted his name on the calendar. So he changed the month Sextilis which had only thirty days, to August, at the same time adding a day taken from February.

Now February, the shortest month, is wedged in between two of the longest months, January and March. Although it is the shortest month of all, it has played just as mighty a part as any other month in the last 2641 years. Two of February’s greatest gifts to America are Washington and Lincoln.

Who will undertake to drive a February wedge between January and March so that the short month measures up to both of them? It will take a stout mallet swung by a strong arm and backed up by an alert brain. The wedge is half way home. The last half requires bolder strokes, but each one gets increasingly greater results.

That extra task done, that additional book read, that extra mile run — what extra, super-work will you undertake to make your February outstanding?
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