Anne Alt's Actions

by Dale Carnegie (1942)

Next April 2nd will be a day that a woman in Compton, California, will celebrate with a great deal of pleasure. On that date, she will celebrate an idea that will be 11 years old. At the same time, a banker in Compton will look down his nose.

Anne Alt had to earn money. But how? That was the catch. This was in 1931 and the Depression was snapping and snarling like a she-wolf with cubs. There were a million other women like her; they all wanted to make money. Anne Alt did something about it: First, she needed an idea. She looked over her stock of ideas; none of them seemed very hot. But she hand-picked them and finally set this one aside as being the best: for some time she had an idea for a brassiere along a new line. She would try out that idea.

So she got some material, and, in the bedroom of her own home, started to make brassieres. She had some women try them out and they all came back with beaming faces. The next step was to protect her idea, so she sent it off to Washington to be patented. While she was waiting, she decided to give the idea a further work-out. So she took some samples to Bullock's Department Store in Los Angeles and sought the buyer. The buyer examined the samples, tried them out, didn’t think much of them. Right then and there, Anne Alt sensed a crisis, so she had a friend go into a dressing booth and try them out.

The buyer looked them over again, was convinced, ordered two dozen. Anne Alt floated home in a haze of happiness.

She sent some samples to a big department store in Detroit. They were accepted; orders were placed for more. To fill these orders, Anne Alt would have to have materials and sewing machines and helpers, so she floated down to the local banker glowing with excitement. But he wasn’t! He didn’t see any sense in the idea. Brassieres were just brassieres. So he turned her down. She remembered an old insurance policy: $180 on that. She borrowed some more money and finally was able to buy the materials. She opened her factory in a garage. It was not long before orders rolled in. Soon the garage was too small, so she built another factory, and today she employs 90 people. Her brassiere is sold all over the country.

Now why was Anne Alt successful? In the first place, when she needed money she determined to do something about it, instead of sitting around wishing. She tried out an idea that appealed to her, got a bit of backing, and began to fill a want that no one else was filling. But the sum and substance is that Anne Alt wanted to do something and did it, instead of day-dreaming. You can’t get anywhere in this world without WANTING TO DO SOMETHING.

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