Some pretty good salesmen never win the grand quota prize in a sales contest because they take so much time out for celebrating the big orders they close.  If they land a fine contract in the morning, they don’t try to do much selling that afternoon.  The prize-winning salesman, too, is delighted to secure a big order.  But he doesn’t say to himself, “That will put me ’way ahead on the sales record for today.”  Instead he grins and thinks, “This is my day.  I’m going to fatten up my batting average while I’m going good.” Success is pepper to him, not the poppy drug that slackens energy.

[Sidenote:  Continual Accumulation]

You have worked hard to get the chance you now have.  You have paid for it with your best efforts. It represents an accumulation of your salesmanship. The good job or the promotion you have gained is like a savings account.  Let us compare it with the first hundred dollars a thrifty man puts into the bank for a rainy day.  Would he celebrate the accumulation of that moderate amount of money, the first evidence of his ability to save, by quitting the practice of spending less than his earnings?  Would he then say to himself, “I am now successful as a saver”?  Would he stop putting a few dollars in the bank every Saturday, just because he already had a hundred?

[Sidenote:  The Building Process is Gradual]

No.  He would continue to save until he had enough “units of thrift,” enough hundreds of dollars, to take a longer step toward success.  He would invest his accumulated savings in a lot, or house.  Perhaps he would start a business of his own.  After his investment he still would continue to save.  So he would build his success.

All building is a gradual, continual process.  The bricks are laid one after another.  It takes many to complete the structure. Likewise a series of minor successes must be built into a major accomplishment. It does not rise all at once.

If you are tempted to pause where you are in order to celebrate, ask yourself, “Is this really the celebration stage?” Probably you will find you have only laid the corner-stone, or made an excavation for the foundation of your success.  You would not think of having a housewarming because you had finished the basement walls.  Nor would you consider it an occasion for especial jollification the day you erected the scantlings around the first floor joists.  Not until the walls are up and the roof is on, not until the house is plastered and papered and painted, not until it is finished would you think of standing on the sidewalk to look it over pride fully and exult, “I did that.  It’s a good job.”

[Sidenote:  Repeated Building]

But if you complete one house, you will not only feel the satisfaction of accomplishment, you will also want to build another that would be a great improvement on the one just finished.  You will be healthily dissatisfied with what you have already done.  Very likely you will sell the first house at a profit, and straightway start to put up a better building on another lot.  In time you will sell that, too.  You will continue the procedure until you become a master builder of houses, and continually achieve more and more success.