Edwin Louis Cole - Treasure : uncovering patterns and principles that create prosperity

To My Grandkids Josh, Seth, Lindsay, Brandon, Holland, Bryce and Kendal

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

CHAPTER ONE

The Basis for a Great Life

John waited in the new subdivision's parked trailer for potential homebuyers whom he could sell on living in his company's newly built houses. He utilized his spare time to learn principles about business and marketing that would help him sell out this fashionable development.

Reading a book one night, John learned a principle about money that he'd never known. He applied its truth, and his career skyrocketed. Someone entered the trailer to buy a home, but instead hired John at a new start-up company. As John followed turns in his career path over the next few years, he stuck with his principles and ended up buying the company where he worked. Based on what he'd learned, he pushed productivity to new highs, which secured him a prosperous lifestyle and a great future for his family.

Everything in life is based on principle. John learned in a dramatic way that if he would change from living on the basis of personality to principles, it would change his life.

Principles are basic truths, fundamental laws of the universe, facts of nature, and primary units of life. The "law of gravity" is a principle of the universe. Isaac Newton discovered the principle and changed the nature of physical science, securing his place in world history.

Discovering principles is a lifelong passion for people who succeed. People who live by personality, preference or prejudice have no bedrock on which to build their lives and end up failing. Their foundation is shifting, movable, unsteady. People who make decisions by personality or preference can be talked out of their decisions from one day to the next. People who make decisions by prejudice can be dead wrong, have it proved to them, yet remain steadfast on the wrong path doing the wrong thing in the wrong way.

The more you build your life on principle, the higher your highs, the straighter your path, and the greater your life.

Finding the Right Pattern

All of life is based on principles and follows patterns. Patterns are ways in which the universe operates. Seedtime and harvest is a pattern. Tides clean the earth according to a pattern. Birds fly south, babies develop, stocks rise and fall, all according to patterns natural to the world in which we live.

You become successful and prosper when you base your life on principles and find the patterns that work for you.

Gladys learned a pattern for home sales that fit her personality and the amount of time she wanted to invest. She perfected the pattern, taught it to her three sons, and became one of the top twenty real estate professionals in the country. She is still tops today after many years, and she still practices the same pattern.

In his popular book Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki identified patterns for parenting that varied between middle and lower class fathers and upper income fathers. His book sold well because he taught a pattern people could understand and follow. The book, The Millionaire Next Door, uncovered millionaires' patterns and made them available to everyone. Discovering and uncovering workable patterns is one of the aims of successful management, corporations, and individuals.

The pattern you learn determines the life you live. The better the pattern, the better the life.

Books Are Your Best Friend

What you have in your hands right now is your most valuable commodity today, because it contains patterns and principles to enable you to prosper in the totality of your life in your finances, family, career and community. Recognize the patterns, learn the principles, and prosper.

An old adage says a dog is man's best friend. It's wrong. Books are people's best friends. At times books are even better than people, because books speak without an accent, using our own voice. The practice of reading books develops the power of concentration and creative thinking. It provides greater understanding, sharpness of mind, and enjoyment of life.

To learn life's most valuable patterns and principles, read what others have already uncovered before you. No scientist today still tries to discover the basic law of gravity. How gravity works is already written in books. Patterns and principles that will make you rich are readily available for you if you'll read.

Reading is an art form, enabling every reader to be an artist. Television, CD-ROM, and audiocassettes are great technological advances, but they do not compare to the skill of reading. In the last thousand years, the Gutenberg Press is still the greatest invention on earth because it allowed people to read for themselves. The common person stops the habit of reading after his schooling, but the uncommon person continues to read and study all through life. Reading makes you uncommon. And unusual. And, reading is an agent against aging. The loss of the habit of reading is a gain in the realm of ignorance.

A love for reading can and should be transmitted generation to generation. Listening is the first thing you learn in life, speaking is next, reading is third and writing is fourth. Today, parents teach the first two, then turn their children over to professionals, but it wasn't always so. In 1644, Massachusetts passed a law making fathers responsible for teaching children to read. It was a good law. Reading is the most inexpensive thing a parent can do with a family -not reading is the most expensive.

Parents misrepresent their role to their children when they leave the child's discipline and education to the other spouse or to the schools. Reading is the ingredient in child development that bonds parent and child closer and easier than any other.

Too often, parents try to solve their children's problems rather than reading to them and letting truth do its own wonderful work. Parents wait until a crisis or particular need occurs, then try to lay the solution on the child. If they had simply read sound principles day by day to their children, the work would have been done, and the answers already learned.

Our culture today advocates the visualwatching entertainment and videos. Culture is the culprit in the rise of ignorance. The book in your hand is a weapon against the cultural malaise of our day.

Only truth can set people free. Books have an infinite life expectancy because the truths they contain can never die. Truth never wears out. Truth is timeless. But truth is like soap. It's only good when it's applied. Act on what you learn. One principle can change your life, marriage or career be gin ning today. For that reason, I don't spoonfeed , coddle or water down the truths, but give you patterns and principles straight, like a drink from a fire hose.

Once a book is written, its life is in the reader's hands. Books are not a matter of dollars and cents, time or no time. They are a matter of life and death.

The Pattern of Levels

Business is not about money or toys, but the level of life on which you want to live. The better your business, the higher the level of life you'll achieve. This is a pattern.

Life is lived on levels that are arrived at in stages. At each stage you choose to move forward or fall back.

Thomas worked hard in an entry-level position at his company's customer service telephone center . His friend Jeremy always ribbed him during lunch for being the best in his group, serving more customers per day than anyone. Thomas took the friendly ribbing, appreciating being admired. The manager over Thomas' supervisor noticed his terrific call record and made an appointment to offer Thomas a promotion.

The company had a more advanced call center where operators handled high-volume customers. Thomas at first learned quickly. But by his second week in the new call center , Thomas was morose. He missed having lunch with his friends and he was embarrassed at being the worst in his division, instead of the best. As his attitude soured, his learning curve dropped and soon he was back in the manager's office because his new supervisor complained.