Secrets Of A Man Who Made Millions For Himself And His Clients
Robert Collier was unequaled in writing sales copy with eye appeal that delivered huge company and corporate profits. Using his skills with words, Collier created phrases with emotional punch that sold millions of dollars of merchandise.
In six months, for example, Collier used direct mail to alter a company’s balance sheet from minus $800,000 to $1,200,000 in NET profits.
“He sold many thousands of the Harvard Classics - a five foot shelf of books by Dr. Elliott - and his circulars on the O. Henry stories brought in orders for over two million dollars,” according to the biographical sketch on the website robertcollierpublications.com
“These successes were followed by orders for over 70,000 books on ‘The History of the World War.’”
The Robert Collier Letter Book
One copywriter who had his home broken into discovered the only thing missing was his copy of The Robert Collier Letter Book. Even the burglar, it seems, thought it was valuable.
I’ve read many of Robert Collier’s sales letters and they are great, but Robert Collier, the advertising man, is not the Robert Collier that fascinated me the most. Robert Collier had another dimension.
Born April 19, 1885 in St. Louis, Robert Collier was expected to become a priest. After a stint in West Virginia as a mining engineer, he headed for New York where he entered the advertising business and proceeded to develop new ideas in sales copy that made millions of dollars for his clients.
Collier, cured of an illness specialists of that era were unable to diagnose, was finally cured through Christian Science and at that point he became interested in what was then called mind-cure. He studied tirelessly the powers of the mind and became convinced our minds contain untapped reservoirs we can use to not only influence what today we would call the body’s biochemistry, but also bring success, happiness, and prosperity to our lives.
The result of his studies was publication of “The Secret of the Ages,” and within six months of publication Collier received more than a million dollars worth of orders for them. Over 300,000 copies were sold!
Robert Collier continued to write such books as “The God in You,” “The Secret Power,” “The Magic Word,” and “The Law of the Higher Potential.” Later these four became one book called “The Law of the Higher Potential,” and has since been renamed “Riches Within Your Reach.” Since his passing in 1950, these and other books Collier wrote on similar themes continue to sell well around the world.
Collier wrote that we have to be successful in our own thoughts first before we can ever truly be a success in the outside world. “Begin your self-analysis with the question, ‘What are my strongest desires? What do I want over and above anything else?’”
“Millions make a reality of poverty through their fear of it,” Collier wrote. “You must think abundance…Let no thought of limitation enter your mind.” In other words, Collier urged his readers to “Practice being rich in your own mind. Picture yourself spending money without a worry as to where more is coming from. You are creating the model in mind. It is the first step in making your dreams come true.”
Optimism was part of Robert Collier’s philosophy for he truly believed, “You are subject to a law of boundless and perpetual opportunity,” and “Your belief you can do the thing gives your thought forces their power.”
Imagineering, where we let our imaginations soar is important - and Collier did a lot of Imagineering in the advertising business - but then the time comes to “engineer [your ideas] down to earth.”
“The self-confidence of a person multiplies their powers a hundredfold,” Collier wrote in “The Secret of the Ages.” Much life failure, he said, is due to wasting time “thinking vaguely about courses of action we probably will never take.” And here is one of my favorite Robert Collier quotes which ties into this issue of self-confidence. “They are fools whose hearts are set on riches but whose souls admit defeat.” He quotes Dr. Charles Fillmore who said in his writings that we increase whatever we praise. “We can praise our own ability and the very brain cells will expand and increase in capacity.”
Another Collier success strategy is to “Look for a demand or a market where there is little competition.” Opportunity, he indicated, “is like oxygen. It is so powerful that we fairly breathe it.” So, begin your success journey, Collier would say, by asking yourself, “What riches and opportunities am I overlooking?” and find out that “some one thing that you can do better than anyone else. There is something that will enable you to reach the top in some one line. Find what you can do best. What people like you best for. Cultivate that.”
The keynote of successful visualization, which Collier advocated as a necessary prelude to success, is to “See things as you would have them be instead of as they are.” He quotes James Allen’s “As a Man Thinketh,” in urging his readers to “Dream lofty dreams and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be. Your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.” Collier asked his readers to make an “I AM SCRAPBOOK,” filled with words and pictures of what they’d like to be and do and he urged them refer to it often.
What is success? Not an easy question to answer but Collier thought the writer Thomas Carlyle had the answer and quoted him as follows: “The wealth of a man is the number of things he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.”
Are you discouraged that things aren’t going so well, despite your best efforts? “Doors that are worth entering,” Collier writes, “are usually closed, but the resolute bang away at them.” He also says, and this I love, that “It is just as easy to talk in millions as in single dollars.”
“What part are you acting in the theater of life?” Collier asks his readers. “What place have you assigned to yourself on that stage? Are you one of the stars?” He then quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson who astutely observed that “Man surrounds himself with the true image of himself.” We become what we think about throughout the day and night, Collier believed, and so “If the dominating thought in your mind is riches, that thought will draw to you opportunities for riches you never dreamed of.”
Your Desire Power, Collier wrote, provides “the homing instinct,” because the very existence of your dreams, ideals, aims, and goals in your desire nature is, in a measure, “the prophecy of their own fulfillment.”
For Robert Collier, our minds have only begun to serve us the way they were designed to. We have yet, in most instances, to activate the higher circuits, but when we do we will truly discover that opportunity is, indeed, like oxygen. “It is so plentiful that we fairly breathe it.”
James Clayton Napier worked as a television broadcaster in Texas for thirteen years. He has also taught TV news reporting and speech communication at three universities. Learn more about James’ current projects at jamesclaytonnapier.com or write ithreads@aol.com
Tags: marketing, money, optimism, sales copy, self-confidence, success, visualization, writing
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