Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MUJIC THADE
V O L . L. N o . 19.
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 1 Madison Ave., New York, May 7,1910
SINGLE COPIES, 10 CENTS.
$2.00 PER YEAR.
T
H E game of business is becoming" more and more interesting".
It is fast attaining tbe dignity of a science, and the guesswork element largely in evi-
dence in days agone is becoming largely eliminated.
Years ago the business world was filled with men who guessed or assumed to understand
that certain figures nearly or approximately represented cost or selling expenses.
A good many of them fooled themselves, and the men who conducted their business affairs along
lines of ignorance are out of the game to-day.
The guesswork man is left far to the rear, and the man with clean cut knowledge is in the front
ranks.
Indefinite figures are the cloak of ignorance.
Definite figures form the basis of action.
There is no compromise in mathematics.
Therefore, the business man should build his system on exact lines, and not approximate the prob-
able cost of anything.
He should know!
Many a man in trade has contributed to his own ruin by not getting exact figures.
The element needed in the business world to-day is exactness—method—system.
Watch successful men in your locality and ask them what it costs to do business—to sell a piano.
They can tell you.
No guesswork with them.
More than that, they can pretty nearly tell what it costs their competitors to do business.
They are keeping in close touch with the game, and they never for an instant permit themselves
to entertain the thought that they are above competition, but they know that a good business generalship
is not built on a guesswork foundation.
They know where they stand in selling expenses.
They keep in touch with the business machinery of which they are the head.
The only way to gain business knowledge is to dig down deep into the departmental workings.
If you have time, dig into every transaction you handle.
Investigate—analyze—study.
No one should be content to do things by rule alone.
They should know the why and wherefore.
Good business judgment is nothing more than following sound principles in the conduct of one's
affairs.
Successful men have learned that it is vastly better and more profitable to know how to do a
few things well—to know the environment surrounding every department of their business—than to do
a great many things indifferently.
It pays to be a specialist in something—then gradually take on besides all that you can.
It is the man who learns to do something better than it was ever done before who wins the prize
in the great business game.
It is the knowing how!
It is the knowledge of details—of the cost of all apparently inconsequential things which enter
into the life of a business institution.
These smaller items are all contributory factors in determining the actual cost in the conduct of
the business.
There are still some men to-day who haven't sufficient knowledge, of the intricacies of the busi-
ness machinery under them to know the cost of doing business.
They are still fooling themselves by nursing" the belief that bulk constitutes profit.
An absurdity, and the quicker it is cut out from the business reasoning the better.
EDWARD LYMAN BILL.