A few years ago, some­thing hap­pened that pro­vided incon­tro­vert­ible proof of the impor­tance of an infal­li­ble rule in copy­writ­ing. I knew it all along but never saw it proven to me in such a per­sonal and direct way.

What am I talk­ing about?

No, it’s not the head­line. It’s not being emo­tional. It’s not ben­e­fits. And it’s not split-​​testing, either. In fact, my open­ing para­graph gave you a clue.

Sure, the head­line, the ben­e­fits, and all those things are impor­tant. Very impor­tant. But the one ele­ment I’m refer­ring to, the one ele­ment that can trans­form flimsy, “yeah-​​right” copy into a sales-​​inducing pow­er­house, is…

… Proof.

Other than poor tar­get­ing and shoddy copy, the lack of proof in your copy is what prob­a­bly (and most likely) causes it to fail. But when I talk about “proof,” I’m not just talk­ing about one or two types, but seven. Yes, seven dif­fer­ent types of proof!

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“Argue for your lim­i­ta­tions and they are yours.”

“There are no lim­i­ta­tions to the mind except those we acknowledge.”
–Napoleon Hill

Through­out my career, I’ve met peo­ple who are truly con­gru­ent and lived life to the fullest. They always seemed to get what they require or desire. They are happy with who they are, what they have, and what they do. They have high lev­els of self-​​esteem and are the kinds of peo­ple I would cer­tainly clas­sify as the truly successful.

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Have you ever made a buy­ing deci­sion only to have that gut instinct called “buyer’s remorse” creep up on you imme­di­ately after you’ve left the store?

Or, worse yet, have you ever felt the need to ratio­nal­ize a pur­chas­ing deci­sion to save your­self from this conflict?

This very thing hap­pened to me just a few days ago. How­ever, this time it was the ven­dor who ini­ti­ated the remorse. (The result was the loss of a four-​​figure sale!)

Read on to find out their grave mis­take… and the mar­ket­ing les­son behind it.

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Many peo­ple will scoff at the idea that there is an exact sci­ence of get­ting rich. Hold­ing the impres­sion that the sup­ply of wealth is lim­ited, they will insist that social and gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions must be changed before even any con­sid­er­able num­ber of peo­ple can acquire a competence.

But this is not true.

It is true that exist­ing gov­ern­ments keep the masses in poverty, but this is because the masses do not think and act in the cer­tain way.

If the masses begin to move for­ward as sug­gested in this book, nei­ther gov­ern­ments nor indus­trial sys­tems can check them; all sys­tems must be mod­i­fied to accom­mo­date the for­ward movement.

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Suc­cess, in any par­tic­u­lar busi­ness, depends for one thing upon your pos­sess­ing, in a well-​​developed state, the fac­ul­ties required in that business.

With­out good musi­cal fac­ulty no one can suc­ceed as a teacher of music. With­out well-​​developed mechan­i­cal fac­ul­ties no one can achieve great suc­cess in any of the mechan­i­cal trades. With­out tact and the com­mer­cial fac­ul­ties no one can suc­ceed in mer­can­tile pur­suits. But to pos­sess in a well-​​developed state the fac­ul­ties required in your par­tic­u­lar voca­tion does not insure get­ting rich. There are musi­cians who have remark­able tal­ent, and who yet remain poor. There are black­smiths, car­pen­ters, and so on who have excel­lent mechan­i­cal abil­ity, but who do not get rich. And there are mer­chants with good fac­ul­ties for deal­ing with peo­ple who nev­er­the­less fail.

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To set about get­ting rich in a sci­en­tific way, you do not try to apply your will power to any­thing out­side of your­self. You have no right to do so, any­way. It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women in order to get them to do what you wish done.

It is as fla­grantly wrong to coerce peo­ple by men­tal power as it is to coerce them by phys­i­cal power. If com­pelling peo­ple by phys­i­cal force to do things for you reduces them to slav­ery, com­pelling them by men­tal means accom­plishes exactly the same thing; the only dif­fer­ence is in meth­ods. If tak­ing things from peo­ple by phys­i­cal force is rob­bery, them tak­ing things by men­tal force is rob­bery also. There is no dif­fer­ence in principle.

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The illus­tra­tions given in the last chap­ter will have con­veyed to the reader the fact that the first step toward get­ting rich is to con­vey the idea of your wants to the form­less substance.

This is true, and you will see that in order to do so it becomes nec­es­sary to relate your­self to the form­less intel­li­gence in a har­mo­nious way.

To secure this har­mo­nious rela­tion is a mat­ter of such pri­mary and vital impor­tance that I shall give some space to its dis­cus­sion here and give you instruc­tions which, if you will fol­low them, will be cer­tain to bring you into per­fect unity of mind with the supreme power, or God.

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