THE WAY TO GREATER TOTAL PROFITS 5 
methods that have been profitable in the past. 4 great 
percentage of the failures in business, if not most of them, are 
due to just this: continuing to use methods that have been 
profitable in the past long after times have ‘changed. 
Probably the sole important difficulty anyone will have 
with this method is in making up his mind to adopt it. 
And yet he will adopt it because he will be convinced that 
it will bring him greater total profits and greatly reduced 
risks in his business. 
Here, too, the time element enters importantly. Some 
people will adopt the Model Stock Plan at once and immedi- 
ately begin to make greater total profits. 
Others will do so more slowly; they will take it up only 
as they see competitors making greater total profits from 
its use. 
Some will never adopt 1t, because, if they wait too long, 
the competition of the better methods will make it too late 
for them to compete with rivals who have taken advantage 
of this newer, better way of doing business. 
So let us bear in mind the advantages of acting promptly. 
A dollar lost may sometimes be re-earned. But time is the 
one business asset that can never be regained; the corollary 
is that profits which are allowed to escape through failure 
to grasp a better idea promptly are the one class of profits 
that are lost for all time. 
Once we get the Model Stock Plan operating it is going to 
help us to keep better stocks with less money invested. It 
will take a great strain off our minds. It will greatly add 
to our total profits by increasing goodwill, as we shall have 
more customers and better satisfied customers. These are 
the advantages this book offers. We shall want to absorb 
everything constructive that it offers. 
The Woolworth, Chevrolet, and Ford principles are the 
same as those presented here out of Model Stock Plan 
experience. What is more, when we have finished our exami- 
nation of these principles, you will agree with me that the 
same basic ideas underlie every one of the shifts in distribu- 
tion which are going on all around us today—except only