How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger Book Review (1949)
How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger is a 1949 sales memoir written by a former major league infielder who was cut from his first professional team. It argues one mechanism, hard: act the way you want to feel, then hold the habit in place with a weekly self-audit copied from Benjamin Franklin. Kevin Trudeau recommends it. Read it if you suspect your problem is energy and follow-through rather than information. Skip it if you came looking for a modern prospecting playbook.
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Seventy-seven years old and still the shortest route to the one idea most salespeople are missing.
What How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger Actually Teaches
Franklin Lyle Bettger was born in Philadelphia in February 1888 and died in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, in November 1981. He played one season of major league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1910, under the name Frank Betcher, batting .202 across 35 games. That was his whole big league career. He coached at Swarthmore College from 1915 to 1919, and in 1917 Charles Hodge of Fidelity Mutual Life hired him into life insurance sales. The book comes out of that job.
It first appeared in 1949 from Prentice-Hall in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, running to 276 pages plus front matter, opening with an introduction by Dale Carnegie titled "What I Think of This Book." Carnegie had encouraged the author to write it, and the two toured together lecturing on sales. The Society for American Baseball Research records that it sold by mail order first, moving 100,000 copies before bookstores got it, and that it has been translated into at least seventeen languages.
The enthusiasm mechanism
Chapter one, "How One Idea Multiplied My Income and Happiness," is the hinge of the entire book. Bettger's telling: in 1907 he was let go by the Johnstown club of the Tri-State League, and the manager told him to wake up and put some life into his work. He landed at New Haven and played at a level of visible energy that felt ridiculous to him at the time. It worked. Years later, stalling in insurance, he applied the same trick to sales calls in front of live prospects.
The claim is narrow and it is the reason to read the book. Bettger is not telling salespeople to feel enthusiastic. He says the feeling is downstream of the behavior, so you produce the behavior first and let the feeling catch up. You do not wait for Monday to arrive with the right mood attached. You act the mood into existence and it arrives second.
Here is the part almost no review of this book tells you. The founding story is partly unreliable. SABR's research on his playing days states plainly that much of Bettger's account is untrue, and that manager Tom Daly released him twelve games in with a .175 average, which reads more like a hitting problem than a hustle problem. He shaped 1907 into a parable from four decades away. That does not break the method. It does mean you read the memoir as a memoir.
The Franklin thirteen-week loop
The most usable machinery in the book is buried near the back, in chapter 34, "Benjamin Franklin's Secret of Success and What It Did for Me." Bettger took Franklin's plan of working on one virtue at a time, kept six of Franklin's subjects, and added seven of his own. His thirteen were enthusiasm, order (self-organization), thinking in terms of the other person's interests, questions, key issue, silence and listening, sincerity, knowledge of his business, appreciation and praise, smiling, remembering names and faces, service and prospecting, and closing the sale.
One subject per week. A three-by-five card in his pocket carrying a short summary of that week's principle, read at odd moments through the day. Week one was enthusiasm. Week two was order. Thirteen weeks to a cycle, then back to the first card. He thought enough of it to expand that chapter into a separate book in 1960.
That structure is the actual product. Anyone can read "be enthusiastic" and nod. Bettger built a loop that returns you to it every thirteen weeks whether you feel like it or not, which is a different thing from agreeing once. Short on time, read chapter 34 first.
The selling half
The book runs to six parts. Part two, "Formula for Success in Selling," is the conventional core. Chapter 9 is on asking questions instead of talking. Chapter 11 is titled "The Most Important Word I Have Found in Selling Has Only Three Letters," and the key word is why. Chapter 12 is on finding the hidden objection. Part three is "Six Ways to Win and Hold the Confidence of Others," and later parts cover names and faces, appointments and closing the sale.
Record-keeping runs underneath all of it. Bettger kept a written account of his calls, then did arithmetic on the year: how many calls produced interviews, how many interviews produced business, what a single call was worth. Writing in 1998, the Deseret News listed that habit among the rules readers take from the book. His numbers are not the point. He stopped guessing, which is what most salespeople never do.
What the back cover promises, and whether it delivers
The publisher sells this on five promises: the power of enthusiasm, how to conquer fear, the key word for turning a skeptical client into an enthusiastic buyer, the quickest way to win confidence, and seven golden rules for closing a sale. Graded in order. The power of enthusiasm is the book and it still works. Conquer fear is real but thinner than the billing. The key word is genuine, it is "why," and chapter 11 earns it. The quickest way to win confidence is part three, which holds up. The seven golden rules for closing a sale sit in chapter 31, the section most welded to 1949, because turning a skeptical client into an enthusiastic buyer in his own front room is not the meeting you are walking into.
How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling in Five Lessons
| Lesson | Where it sits in the book | What Bettger argues |
|---|---|---|
| Behavior comes before feeling | Chapter 1, the Johnstown and New Haven story | Act enthusiastic and it follows. Waiting for the mood is the mistake. |
| One subject a week, thirteen weeks a cycle | Chapter 34, "Benjamin Franklin's Secret of Success and What It Did for Me" | Franklin's method beats willpower because it reinstalls the principle on a loop. |
| A planning morning at the end of the week | Chapter 4, "The Only Way I Could Get Myself Organized" | The week is decided before it starts, not during it. |
| Ask, then ask why | Chapters 9 and 11 | The three-letter key word "why" surfaces the real reason a person acts. |
| Keep the record | Threaded through part two | Count your own activity and the numbers show you what to change. Opinion is worthless. |
Why Kevin Trudeau Recommends How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger
The book appears on the recommended materials list published by the Kevin Trudeau fan club, listed under a slightly different title as "How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success Through Selling." Its place there makes sense once you look at what the author is doing with the card system.
Trudeau's Teachability Index is willingness to learn multiplied by willingness to change, and he argues a person scoring low on either half cannot be taught. Bettger's thirteen-week loop is that index turned into an object. He is not reading a principle and agreeing with it. He carries one card, works one subject, and comes back to it three months later. Agreement costs nothing. The card costs a week.
The behavior-first sequence also lands near why Trudeau says positive thinking on its own fails, though they arrive from different directions. Trudeau's objection is the subconscious rejecting a statement it does not believe. Bettger sidesteps belief entirely, and if belief is your actual bottleneck The Magic of Believing is the book for that. He never asks you to think anything. He asks you to raise your voice, move faster and show up differently, treating the internal state as a result rather than an input.
Repetition is the other overlap. Trudeau's account of the three parts of your mind puts the reactive mind in charge of most daily behavior, and in his telling that layer answers to repetition rather than reasoning. A pocket card read at odd moments all week, then again next quarter, is repetition in its plainest form. Bettger never uses that vocabulary. He built the drill instead.
Where they part company is worth naming. Trudeau's central diagnosis is counterintentions, buried programs he says run opposite to whatever you consciously decided. Bettger has no such concept. His diagnosis is behavioral all the way down: you are flat, so act less flat. A Trudeau reading would say he fixes the surface and gets away with it because the drill is relentless enough to work anyway.
One more placement. On Trudeau's Training Balance Scale this looks like a pure action book, and half of it is. The card system is not: sitting with one subject for seven days is inner work in a salesman's coat. The tie to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People is not incidental either. Carnegie aims at the relationship, Bettger at the operator.
Where How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling Sits Next to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a paid membership organization, on his claim that the most valuable knowledge about wealth and success has been kept from the public. GIN is a progression: levels, events, material that assumes you are staying.
Bettger is the opposite shape. One book, one mechanism, one loop you can begin this week without joining anything. A good entry point and a poor foundation. It says nothing about what you want or why, which is the whole subject of Trudeau's manifestation material.
Read it alongside The Go-Getter by Peter B. Kyne and you have both halves of the action side in four hours. Kyne gives you the standard for the night everything goes wrong. Bettger gives you the system for the ordinary Tuesday, the harder problem. See You at the Top is the third corner of that shelf. For where Trudeau's own titles sit next to this one, the complete guide to Kevin Trudeau's books and reading order lays out the sequence.
Who Should Read How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger, and Who Should Skip It
Read it if you sell anything, including yourself. Read it if you have the knowledge and cannot convert it into weeks that look different from each other. The thirteen-week card transfers cleanly to work with no prospects in it at all.
Skip it if your problem is strategy rather than output. Bettger will not hand you a channel, a funnel, or a script for a market that did not exist in 1949. He works on the engine, not the map.
Is it the best book on selling ever written?
Salespeople call it that, and the claim is half right. On the operator, the person making the calls, it is the best book in the category and nothing since has replaced it. On the sale itself, no. Chapter 31 was written for a man sitting in a prospect's front room in 1949.
Know what you are buying
Three things. Baseball researchers have challenged the founding story, so treat the memoir as a memoir and the method as the method. The tactics are life insurance tactics from the 1940s, heavy on the in-person call, with nothing about email or phone screening. And the prose is folksy in a way that will grate.
How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger Book Review: Frequently Asked Questions
What is How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling about?
Frank Bettger's account of turning around a failing sales career by acting enthusiastic before he felt enthusiastic, and by running a weekly self-improvement cycle adapted from Benjamin Franklin. The second half is a set of selling methods built on asking questions and keeping records of his own activity.
When was How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling first published?
1949, by Prentice-Hall of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Many sites list 1947. The Prentice-Hall edition scanned by the Internet Archive is dated 1949 and carries a 1949 Library of Congress card number, and Open Library also records 1949 as the first publication year.
Did Frank Bettger really play Major League Baseball?
Yes. He appeared in 35 games for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1910 under the name Frank Betcher and batted .202. Accounts of how his playing days ended differ: one version has a pitched ball breaking his arm in 1913, while the Society for American Baseball Research records that he simply failed to report to Charlotte's spring training camp in 1914 and never formally retired.
Did Dale Carnegie write the foreword to How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling?
Carnegie wrote the book's introduction, which is titled "What I Think of This Book." He had encouraged Bettger to write it, and the two later toured together lecturing on selling.
What is Frank Bettger's thirteen-week system?
Set out in chapter 34, "Benjamin Franklin's Secret of Success and What It Did for Me". He borrowed Franklin's plan of working on one subject at a time, kept six of Franklin's and added seven of his own, and worked a single subject for one full week. Thirteen subjects makes a thirteen-week cycle, and he ran the cycle again from the start, carrying a three-by-five pocket card with that week's principle on it.
Is How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling still worth reading?
The mindset and self-organization half has aged well and takes an afternoon. The selling tactics are from the era of the in-person insurance call and you will be translating them. Read the first four chapters and chapter 34 closely, then skim the rest if you are short on time.
Further reading: Frank Bettger on Wikipedia and Benjamin Franklin on Wikipedia.