TWO BASIC LAWS OF LEADERSHIP

THE LAW OF SOWING AND REAPING

Here’s the first of the basic laws of leadership: Whatever you sow, you reap. Now here’s another way to put it on the positive side: In order to reap, you must sow. Reaping is reserved for those who sow, who plant. To deserve the harvest, you must plant the seed. Take care of it in the summer. Carefully harvest it and then do wise things with the harvest.

Now, here’s the rest of the law of sowing and reaping. If you sow good, you reap good. If you sow bad, you reap bad. You can’t sow bad and hope for good. You can’t plant weeds and hope for flowers. It works both positive and negative. Here’s something else about the law of sowing and reaping. You don’t reap only what you sow. That’s important to understand. You reap much more than what you sow. If you just reaped what you sow, what’s the exercise for? No, we don’t reap only what we sow. We reap much more than what we sow.

An important thing to understand about that is it works both positive and negative. The old prophet said, “If you sow the wind, you don’t reap wind, you reap a whirlwind.” You’ve got to be careful sowing the wind. It doesn’t come back as a wind. It comes back as a whirlwind. That’s on the negative side. But now it also works on the positive side. If you plant a cup of corn, how much do you get back, a cup? No, a bushel for the cup. You get back much more than what you plant. That’s the reason for planting—for the increase.

Now here’s the next key to the law of sowing and reaping. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Everybody has to understand. The farmer plants the crop in the spring and takes care of it all summer. He’s an honorable man. Loves his family and is a decent citizen. But the day before he sends the combines into the field, a hailstorm comes along and beats his crop into the ground. And it’s gone. It’s lost.

So this time it didn’t work. Now what must the farmer do? He’s got to decide whether to do it again or not. “Shall we take another chance the next spring?” We would advise him to do so even though he lost everything in the last harvest, because, more often than not, you’ll have a harvest if you plant in the spring. There’s no guarantee, but it’s pretty good odds. It’s better than Las Vegas. Incredible! The law of sowing and reaping.

THE LAW OF AVERAGES

One of the most important basic laws of leadership to learn is the law of averages. If you do something often enough, you’ll get a ratio of results. Once you understand that, the world is yours.

Let’s say you’re just getting started in sales and you talk to ten people. You talk to ten, and you get one. We now have what we call the beginning of a ratio. Talk to ten, nine say no, and one says, Yes, I’ll buy your product. I’ll take your service. Somebody says, “Well, one out of ten isn’t that good.” Well, you’re just getting started. Here’s what happens with the law of averages: Once it starts, it tends to continue. If you talk to ten and get one, chances are excellent that if you talk to ten more you’ll get another one.

In baseball, we call it a batting average. Swing ten times, get a hit. Swing ten times more, get a hit. Nobody bats nine out of ten. You can make six million dollars a year and not bat nine out of ten, nor eight out of ten, nor seven out of ten, nor five out of ten, nor four out of ten, nor three out of ten. Some of these guys are getting five or seven million dollars a year batting two, three out of ten. You don’t have to be perfect here. All you have to do is understand the law of averages.

Even if you’re only getting one out of ten, you can now start to compete. If you’ve been at it a long time, you can get nine out of ten. Even though I just joined and I can only get one out of the ten, I’m telling you if we have a contest I will beat you. You say, “Well, you just started. How could you beat me?” It’s very simple. If we have a 30-day or a 60-day contest, while you talk to ten and get nine, I’ll talk to one hundred and get ten. I win. Isn’t that clever?

Here’s what I do if I’m new. I make up in numbers what I lack in skill. I make up in numbers what I first lack in skill. Now when my skills increase, I don’t have to do a hundred to get ten. Once you understand the law of averages, the chances are excellent that the ratios will work for you.

Here’s what else is exciting: The law of averages can be increased. At first you only get one out of ten. But the better you get, the more skills you develop, and you can get two out of ten, and then three out of ten. And you don’t need more than two or three out of ten to get rich. The law of averages is one of the greatest studies to make. It’ll serve you well as a leader in your business career, your sales career, any kind of career.