Part 4 of a 5-part series on the Golden Rules for Making Money, as set forth in P.T. Barnum's 1880 guidebook Art of Getting Money
You can strive to be excellent. Or you can strive to make money.
You cannot do both.
"The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation," says P.T. Barnum.
Focusing on a fat bottom line is getting above your business. It guarantees you'll occupy a place below competitors.
Focusing on excellence is sticking to your business. It guarantees you'll attract a lot of customers.
"Americans are too superficial," Barnum writes. "They are striving to get rich quickly, and do not generally do their business as substantially and thoroughly as they should. But whoever excels all others in his own line, if his habits are good and his integrity undoubted, cannot fail to secure abundant patronage, and the wealth that naturally follows. Let your motto then always be 'Excelsior,' for by living up to it there is no such word as fail."
