I love today's article by Live & Learn columnist Larry Crider.
Have you ever noticed that some people find success in life because they care for and about others?
Today many successful people have discovered that money is the worst motivator but one of the best is to try and do something to help others. That was certainly the case for Lunsford Richardson.
In the 1890s patent medicines were everywhere. Lydia Pinkham tried to cure “female complaints” – and her financial distress – with her tonic of herbs and a heavy dose of alcohol. She succeeded. Later she made even more money marketing her pills and a “blood purifier.”Asa Soule, a teetotaling entrepreneur, never let ethics get in the way of his “Doyle’s Hop Bitters”, one of the most popular of the patent medicines and almost exclusively alcohol. It made him a millionaire even though it never really cured anything.
Lunsford Richardson, however, was different. When his young son, Smith, suffered recurring bouts of croup, Richardson simply wanted to make his son better. A North Carolina pharmacist, he had some vague ideas of what might work. He turned out to be right.
His brother-in-law was a doctor, so Richardson arranged to borrow the doctor’s laboratory to do some experimenting. At first none of his experiments paid off but then one day he came across a little-known Japanese extract and mixed it with some ingredients he had on hand to create a salve. This he rubbed on his son the next time the boy had croup. It seemed to help.
Then he offered it to some of his neighbors for them to use on their own children. Again it seemed to help.
That is when Lunsford Richardson began to market his “Croup and Pneumonia Cure."
His motivation wasn’t to make money – although he did amazingly well at that – but simply to help sick children.
He did so well, in fact, that by 1909 he sold his drugstore and invested his life savings into building a laboratory of his own to manufacture and market the medicine.
By this time his son, Smith, was grown and working with his dad. Smith Richardson convinced his father that the medicine would sell better if it had a catchier name. They decided to name the product after Richardson’s brother-in-law and to call it something different.
They even changed the packaging to distinguish their medicine from all the others on the market. The brother-in-law’s name? Dr. Joshua Vick.
Yes, the product was “Vick’s VapoRub” which made use of the Japanese mint oil extract called “menthol” mixed with camphor and eucalyptus oil in a petroleum jelly base. It vaporized by body heat alone and was also safe on the skin. Today it is still doing pretty well.
The point in sharing this tale, however, is not to simply tell the history of a common product, but to point out that it is generally true that when a man or woman sets out just to make money, their story doesn’t often end well.
On the other hand, those motivated to make life better for others, even if they fail, find their lives have been successful in ways money cannot buy.
Many business leaders have studied what it takes to be successful.
Over and over again they have discovered that those people who are really successful are the ones who have altruistic motives. They want to make life better for everyone, not just to make themselves rich. There certainly is a lesson in that for all of us.
Think about it.© 2009 Larry A. Crider Enterprises, 2809 Mohawk, Longview, Texas 75605
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