I was introduced to “Think and Grow Rich!” by an alcoholic member of our cemetery sales team. I had a wife and three children at the time, and we were just barely making it. My only source of income was the commissions I made knocking on doors selling cemetery property, and they were hard to come by, especially since almost nobody was a permanent resident in the Miami area.

Reading “Think and Grow Rich!” gave me a crutch to lean on as I forced myself out to pound those doors where the potential prospects were. If my family was going to eat, I had to convince people to buy cemetery property 30 or 40 or more years before they would need it. The Six-Step Success Formula the book contains helped me to realize that there was a way even for an uneducated lunkhead like me to make it like the big guys. I followed the success formula faithfully, and, lo and behold, my whole life turned around.

Two of my most useful tools in the book are the poem “My Wage” (“I bargained with Life for a penny…”) and “If You Think You Are Beaten” (“Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man…”). I truly believe that Dr. Hill has the same message the Bible has for us. It was just little easier for me to apply. I went on to build the largest cemetery organization in the country starting out from my basement on Concord Avenue in Anderson, S. C. In 1970, we sold 30 cemeteries to Service Corporation International, making it possible for them to become the largest funeral-cemetery company in the world. I served as President of their Cemetery Division for three years.

I’m now 82 years old, living comfortably on the shores of Lake Hartwell with my wife of 62 years. Almost all my good fortune came about because I had the good fortune to be introduced to “Think and Grow Rich!” in 1953. (This new addition is actually closer to the one I read back then. The versions sold since the 1960s omit a lot of material that Ross Cornwell has put back in.) I have given away many cases of this great book. It was required reading in my company and in my family, and it has made a difference in a lot of the people’s lives who were given the opportunity to make it part of their lives.

Thank you, Ross Cornwell, for this wonderful “added value” new edition of the book that has meant everything to me — and for giving me this opportunity to look back and appreciate how really important all of this is and what a difference it has made in my life and the lives of so many others.