Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of wearable inspiration for a better world. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from The Mental Highway by Thomas Parker Boyd, published in 1922….

We each have in ourselves the potential elements of genius. Our business is to find out how to set them free and get them into effective operation. Remember that a one-talent person working at their highest efficiency is worth a hundred undeveloped ten-talent people. While we all may differ in the degree and variety of natural endowments, everyone has the potential elements of success.

Success consists in realizing that you have it in you, that you are worthy to succeed, then carrying your qualities to market. For no matter how high the quality of your faculties and abilities may be, they do not spell success until you market them.

You do not actually sell your qualities. You merely sell ideas relating to them. Success consists in selling your ideas of them rather than selling someone else’s ideas of them. A salesperson does not sell so many barrels of oil, but certain ideas about the oil. The “goods” are delivered afterward. A real estate agent does not sell a house, but an idea of a home. When you sell your services to a company, you merely sell an idea of what your services will be worth to the firm. You deliver the (quote) “goods” afterward.

The art of selling yourself hinges on a right idea about your goods and how to get that right idea across to the mind of the potential buyer or employer. This resolves itself into the following formula that operates in the following order: (1) Develop your best capabilities to the highest possible degree. (2) Learn to describe them truly so that you can present them and sell them, so that the prospective buyer will get a correct idea of what you can do. (3) Identify your market. Find the right field for your goods or services. (4) All that is left to do is to deliver the goods, to make the prospective buyer know that you are the person for the place, or that your goods will better fill their needs than any others.

Your success depends on your skill in discovering the open way of access to the buyer’s mind, then finding their particular point of interest in your proposition. In what way can it serve them and forward their interests? After having discovered this point, the next move is to illustrate your ability to help them achieve their goals until you can close the deal.

Suggestion is the supreme agent in these steps. It is present in your idea, your presentation, your words, your tone, your eyes, your gesture, your pose of body, your muscular tension; for these are all ways of expressing yourself — and it is the ideas of yourself that you are selling. Avoid antagonism, criticism, and comparison when using suggestion. Commending a company’s effort to be up to date is far better than intimating that their methods are behind the times.

Make your suggestion tend to produce direct results in action. Suggesting to an employer that they need and want your services is far better than asking for a position. It is a good suggestion to show similarity of ideas, also to manifest the probability of growth. Propose the idea that one strong point of your qualifications is just one point in your all-round fitness.

Picturing yourself in active service is good autosuggestion. Find out what the employer wants, but avoid showing that YOU want something very much. Instead, hold to the idea that you can supply what the buyer or employer lacks. This sort of suggestion leads to action.

Your ultimate success in selling yourself resolves itself into a problem of skill and availability. An analysis of your present equipment will be helpful, because you need to know your faults with an idea of correcting them. Maybe your chief fault is poor mental fuel. Your mind isn’t filled with powerful ideas and is disorganized. Maybe the piston rod rings leak, and you do not get the high compression of determination and persistence.

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