596 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-CREATION
In 19 I 7 a woman, who was then nearing fifty, was working as a
stenographer at fifteen dollars a week. Judging by the salary, she must
have been none too competent in that work.
About ten years later, this same woman was clearing a little over
$100,000 on the lecture circuit. What bridged that mighty chasm
between her two earning capacities? The Habit of Doing More Than
Paid For.
This woman became well known throughout the country as a
prominent lecturer on the subject of applied psychology.
Let me show you how she harnessed the law of increasing returns.
First she went into a city and delivered a series of fifteen free lectures.
Anyone could attend, at no charge. As she was delivering these lectures
she had the opportunity of "selling herself" to her audience, and
at the end of the series she announced the formation of a class for
which she charged twenty-five dollars per student.
That's all there was to her plan. While she was commanding a
small fortune for a year's work, there were scores of much more
proficient lecturers who were barely getting enough from their work
to pay their expenses, simply because they had not yet familiarized
themselves, as she had, with the fundamentals on which this lesson
is based.
COMMENTARY
At a later time, Hill himself used the same principle but he combined it with the
leading technology of his day. Napoleon Hill took his lecture series and turned it
into radio programs and later television shows that were broadcast all over America.
These were but a more sophisticated version of "free /I lectures that enticed
listeners and viewers to see him for themselves and perhaps buy his books.
The Silva Method, a success system developed by Jose Silva and based on
concepts very similar to those espoused by Napoleon Hill, became popular using
essentially that same principle. Beginning in the late 1960s, every weekend in