The Law of Process

John C. Maxwell

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781400275625
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Theodore Roosevelt helped create a world power, won a Nobel Peace Prize, and became president of the United States. But today you wouldn't even know his name if he hadn't known the Law of Process.

THE LAW OF PROCESS

Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day

Anne Scheiber was 101 years old when she died in January 1995. For years she had lived in a tiny, run-down, rent-controlled studio apartment in Manhattan. The paint on the walls was peeling, and the old bookcases that lined the walls were covered in dust. Rent was four hundred dollars a month.

Scheiber lived on Social Security and a small monthly pension, which she started receiving in 1943 when she retired as an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. She hadn’t done very well at the IRS. More accurately, the agency hadn’t done right by her. Despite having a law degree and doing excellent work, she was never promoted. And when she retired at age fifty-one, she was making only $3,150 a year.

“She was treated very, very shabbily,” said Benjamin Clark, who knew her as well as anyone did. “She really had to fend for herself in every way. It was really quite a struggle.”

Scheiber was the model of thrift. She didn’t spend money on herself. She didn’t buy new furniture as the old pieces she owned became worn out. She didn’t even subscribe to a newspaper. About once a week, she used to go to the public library to read the Wall Street Journal.

WINDFALL!

Imagine the surprise of Norman Lamm, the president of Yeshiva University in New York City, when he found out that Anne Scheiber, a little old lady whose name he had never heard—and who had never attended Yeshiva—left nearly her entire estate to the university.

“When I saw the will, it was mind blowing, such an unexpected windfall,” said Lamm. “This woman has become a legend overnight.”

The estate Anne Scheiber left to Yeshiva University was worth $22 million!¹

How in the world did a spinster who had been retired for fifty years build an eight-figure fortune? The answer is, she did it one day at a time.

By the time she retired from the IRS in 1943, Anne Scheiber had managed to save $5,000. She invested that money in stocks. By 1950, she had made enough profit to buy 1,000 shares of Schering-Plough Corporation stock, then valued at $10,000. And she held on to that stock, letting its value build. By the time she died, those original shares split enough times to produce 128,000 shares, worth $7.5 million.²

The secret to Scheiber’s success was that she spent most of her life building her worth. Whether her stock’s values went up or down, she didn’t sell it off with the thought, I’m finished building; now it’s time to cash out. She was in for the long haul, the really long haul. When she earned dividends—which kept getting larger and larger—she reinvested them in additional ...