Everybody Sells
- by Orison Sweet Marden, May, 1919
"We are all salesmen. We must sell something in order to live....You are selling your brains, your health, your vitality, your strength; you are selling your ingenuity, your resourcefulness, your originality, your initiative, your courage; You are selling your executive ability in some way.
"Some of us sell ourselves too dearly; others too cheaply. Many of us fail to keep ourselves sold a large part of the time. The quality of our goods is not the best and so it is often returned, undesired.
"There are many things you are selling that, perhaps, you do not realize.
"Have you ever stopped to think that you are selling your appearance, your dress, your bearing, your manners, your conversation, your optimism, your mental attitude toward life, toward your work, and toward others?
"You are selling your thoughts, selling your heredity, all that you have inherited, all of your advantages, all of your experiences, everything that has gone before. The quality of the merchandise you offer and the price you desire will indicate the sort of character material you have manufactured or accumulated."
Orison Swett Marden (1850 - 1924) was an American writer and successful hotel owner. His parents died while he was still young and Orison had to work as a "hired boy" to earn his keep. Inspired by an early self-help book by the Scottish author Samuel Smiles, Marden set out to improve himself and his life circumstances. He persevered in advancing himself and graduated from Boston University in 1871. He later graduated from Harvard with an M.D. in 1881 and an LL.B. degree in 1882. He also studied at the Boston School of Oratory and Andover Theological Seminary.
Although he is best known for his books on financial success, he always emphasized that this would come as a result of cultivating one's personal development: "The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone." Marden died in 1924 at the age of 74.
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