- Don’t mistake your vocation (i.e. choose a profession you enjoy).
- Select the right location (i.e where you can realistically engage in your profession).
- Avoid debt.
- Persevere.
- Whatever you do, do it with all your might.
- Depend upon your own personal exertions (i.e. learn your profession).
- Use the best tools.
- Don’t get above your business (i.e. don’t be above doing the hands-on labor).
- Learn something useful (i.e have a trade or skill to fall back on).
- Let hope predominate. But be not too visionary (i.e. don’t automatically believe every project will succeed).
- Do not scatter your powers (i.e. don’t be a “jack-of-all-trades” and focus on one profession).
- Be systematic (i.e set times and places for your work, be organized and punctual, do one thing at a time).
- Read the newspapers.
- Beware of “outside” operations (i.e. spending speculative venture capital on risky, unknown operations and companies).
- Don’t endorse without security (i.e. don’t give away/invest money in someone or something, even if you feel safe about it, without some security to protect yourself).
- Advertise your business.
- Be polite and kind to your customers.
- Be charitable.
- Don’t blab (i.e. say nothing of your internal operations to others).
- Preserve your integrity (i.e. your integrity far outweighs profits so come by profits honestly).
from The Art of Money Getting (1880)