The Templeton Plan

by Sir John Templeton

  Try to appreciate some positive quality in all the people you meet.

  Try to be humble in all your actions.

  Try to face even the most difficult situations with equanimity and patience.

  Learn to feel joy over the good fortune of others.

  Never forget that the only reality is the Creator; he and his works are the only permanent things on this earth.

  Through the exercise of will, we can come closer each day to becoming truly successful and happy people.

  STEP 20

  DISCOVERING NEW FRONTIERS

  AMONG THE NUMEROUS dictionary definitions of frontier, there are two that most clearly explain John Templeton’s feelings about carefully calculated risks and challenge in the face of adversity: “The farthermost limits of knowledge or achievement with respect to a particular subject” and “a new field that offers scope for exploitative or developmental activity.”

  From an early age, young John showed a willingness to say yes to experience. Although he was the first in his rural county to take college entrance examinations, he attended Yale. After he graduated from college, he went off to England on a Rhodes scholarship. You would think that such a radical change might have thrown a boy from a small Tennessee town, but, in fact, the opposite was true: He thrived on the challenge.

  He took advantage of a program called Ryderising, a system of travel set up by Lady Frances Ryder to expose American students to proper British families. Many students were too shy or socially backward to join the program, but John immediately jumped at it. Soon he met many interesting and distinguished families.

  His willingness to try new experiences taught him much about the world and helped him on his way to success. It’s important to understand that, for reasons John sensed subconsciously, the personal contacts he was making and the experiences he was having would later prove invaluable to him. So he overcame whatever timidity he might have felt and threw himself enthusiastically into a variety of strange experiences and personal encounters.

  He was not afraid of new frontiers; he welcomed them. Whether it was the frontier of Yale, or traveling to England on his Rhodes scholarship, or touring far-flung and exotic places in the world on a few hundred dollars, or making the decision to enter a field—mutual fund investing—almost before such a field existed, John Templeton was convinced that there were new frontiers to discover.

  Success-bound people have to believe in themselves, because the frontier exists inside of them. Jesus’ teaching concerning this is found in Luke (17:21) where we are reminded that “the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed;…for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” This is the true frontier that we must explore: our own inner being, our own divinity. Forgetting our divinity or turning away from it creates a sense of separation from God. As we learn to remember our oneness with God, we will automatically realize every person’s oneness with God and with us.

  Templeton puts great store in the words of Charles E. Kettering, a scientist whose research included the invention of automotive starting and ignition systems: “There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.”

  And those of the English novelist Tobias Smollett: “Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall.”

  And these of Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the French pilot and author: “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

  And especially the words of President Theodore Roosevelt:

  It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. No father and mother can hope to escape sorrow and anxiety, and there are dreadful moments when death comes very near to those we love, even if for the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living. There are many forms of success, many forms of triumph. But there is no other success that in any shape or way approaches that which is open to most of the many men and women who have the right ideals. These are the men and women who see that it is the intimate and homely things that count most. They are the men and women who have the courage to strive for the happiness that comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.

  When young Templeton returned to the United States after completing his Rhodes scholarship and journeying through India, China, Japan, and much of the Middle East, he was a wiser young man for all of the challenges and risks he had eagerly accepted. He had learned something about the lifestyles and attitudes of a variety of people.

  He was ready to settle down to the challenge of work. When two solid job offers in New York came through, he took the lower-paying job. Again, he was ready to gamble, to move out to the frontier. He felt that the position with Fenner & Beane, a stock brokerage firm that just three months earlier had established its investment counseling division, would give him an opportunity to learn much and to learn it quickly.

  Two years later, having taken certain factors into consideration that reduced the risk of his sizable investment, he made his now-famous offer to buy $100 worth of every stock on the stock exchanges that was selling for no more than a dollar per share. As preparation, he had done thorough research during the previous two years on the performance of stocks selling for less than one dollar, and in case his theory should prove wrong, he had sufficient assets to cover the $10,000 he borrowed.

  As you can see, people on the road to success are not afraid to take calculated risks. They prepare carefully for their forays into uncharted territory.

  The ability to take risks and accept challenges is keenest among those with deep religious faith. Faith means “having respect for” or “standing in awe of,” which is the opposite of the blindness that skeptics often associate with faith.

  Basically faith, like hope, involves trust. In what or whom do we trust? We learn to trust the eternal, not the transient. Understand the transient and use it for your own ends, but do not place lasting hope in it.

  It is said that faith can move mountains. Faith gives courage; it enables people to seek out new territory, stretch their abilities, gamble for the greater good, and, in times of trouble, they will know how to deal with adversity.

  In February 1951 tragedy entered John Templeton’s life. His first wife was killed in a highway accident while they were touring Bermuda on motorbikes.

  “I had three small children,” Templeton recalls. “I didn’t know how to be a mother to them, but I had to try. I couldn’t spend all day with them because I was in the midst of trying to build a business and earn a living.”

  This tragedy was magnified for Templeton because his mother had died a few months before, in September 1950. Within the space of six months he had lost the two most important women in his life. He was thrown back as never before upon his own spiritual resources.

  He remarried in 1958, to Irene Reynolds Butler. She supported him fully in his religious pursuits as his spiritual sensitivities began to sharpen. He had met the challenge of the death of two loved ones—there can be no greater challenge—by developing a deeper belief in God. Death, too, was a frontier that had to be charted, mapped out, and lived in.

  Then, as the 1960s unfolded, Templeton’s spiritual and professional lives came together in a way that was to make him one of the most successful investors in this century. First of all, the group of mutual funds that he had established was doing well. An insurance company offered to buy him and the seven other shareholders out. He had been having increasingly strong feelings that it was time for him to devote more effort and financial support to spiritual matters, and this opportunity seemed an advantageous way to reduce his work load and focus his energies on religion.

  As he put it, “I had spent my early career helping people with their personal finances, but helping them to grow spiritually began to seem so much more important.
”

  The Templetons selected the Bahamas as their permanent home base—a place where they could live among people of deep spirituality in a setting of natural beauty, a place conducive to religious study and work. And he began to devote another thirty hours a week to religious and philanthropic work.

  Through good times and bad, success-bound people will seek out new frontiers to explore, to settle, to enhance. They will gladly accept risk and challenge, because through risk and challenge we grow both in worldly wisdom and spiritual strength.

  In the Bahamas, Templeton promoted spirituality in a number of ways. His Templeton Foundation gave scholarships to ministers in the Bahamas for study both there and at New Jersey’s Princeton Theological Seminary. Recently, in memory of his mother, Templeton founded Templeton Theological Seminary, the first school for the education of Christian ministers in the Bahamas. Also, each year the foundation sponsors lectures in the Bahamas by the winners of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

  The Templeton Prize is John Templeton’s most ambitious contribution to understanding the religious life. Through it, his ultimate purpose—to help millions of people in all nations to benefit from learning about the major new spiritual developments throughout the world—seems well on the road to accomplishment. Not surprisingly, given the force of his belief, his entire family has joined in the effort. Templeton’s wife, all five of their children, and his brother Harvey are trustees of the Templeton Foundation.

  Templeton, John W. Galbraith, and Thomas L. Hansberger operate an investment counsel corporation that manages over $10 billion of securities worldwide in private accounts and public investment mutual funds owned by over 500,000 investors in many nations. Templeton, Galbraith & Hansberger Ltd. and its associates have offices in Nassau; St. Petersburg and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Toronto; London; and Hong Kong. Its shares trade actively on the London Stock Exchange.

  The frontier lies in the future, and success-bound people welcome the future just as they welcome change generally. We Americans were led to believe that with the opening up of the West, there were no new frontiers to discover. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every day new fields develop or grow more sophisticated, which means increased opportunities. But you must be willing to work hard and to risk. You must be prepared and eager to confront challenge, private and professional.

  If you look to the future as a vast, exciting, and still unexplored territory, you are on your way to becoming a successful person.

  After reading and reviewing Step 20, you should ask yourself the following questions:

  Am I open to change?

  Am I eager to travel to new places?

  Am I eager to meet new people?

  Am I receptive to new ways to do things that will improve my performance?

  Do others consider me a flexible person with an open mind?

  Do I make an attempt to bring my professional and spiritual lives into harmony?

  Do I feel that I’m prepared to deal with adversity?

  Remember: Reaching out takes many forms, all of them important. You reach out by giving to others. You reach out by understanding and appreciating others. And you reach out in your search for new frontiers. They are all important ways to grow into a more successful and happy human being, and they are connected, one to the other.

  STEP 21

  SEEKING SOLUTIONS

  SUCCESS GOES to those people who seek solutions rather than problems, and nowhere is this more evident than in a business career. An employer is more likely to promote those who never come forward with a problem for which they do not offer—or actively seek—a solution.

  In all areas of life, people who are problem-laden cast a deadening influence on themselves and others. They stress the negative rather than the positive. They need to learn that inventive thinking results from a constant search for solutions.

  A choice of career is the first major solution the success-bound person must seek. The wisest course is to choose an area where you can become an expert. Ninety-nine percent of us can become an expert at something.

  If you have any doubt about where your abilities lie, take various aptitude tests. Talk to your teachers and friends about yourself, asking them to assess your strengths and weaknesses. Go through a telephone directory and mark those businesses and professions where you sense your talents lie.

  But never take a passive and negative approach to your own self-assessment. Don’t assume that you have no special talent, because you do. We all do.

  Once you have chosen a career path, study and work harder than others so that you can become the very best at what you do. Only one person will reach the very highest rung, but by trying hard most of us can achieve the upper 10 percent and thereby lead happy and productive lives.

  It is sad to see people envy the talents of others. They are creating problems for themselves, not solutions. Whatever path you take, tell yourself it is the very best path there is, and envy no one. Try to learn as much as can be learned in your field. Experiment and originate; try to extend the frontiers of knowledge in that field.

  Working at the top level in any field, however humble, gives a person self-confidence. In turn, the self-confidence will attract the confidence of others. It is in such a way that success feeds on itself and creates more success.

  Sometimes it happens that, having become an expert in one area, technological or other changes occur that render your job redundant. Accordingly; it is wise to move as soon as possible to where the opportunities still exist. Do not remain in a position that is no longer useful. If, in fact, you lose your job, it is vital to have an open-minded and flexible attitude about possible career solutions. Finding the suitable new job is a job in itself. The solution is to work eight hours a day, sending out réSsumés, answering classified advertisements, and setting up appointments.

  In the last analysis, however, no true solutions are possible without recourse to God. When John Templeton’s children were teenagers, he wrote an essay for them in which he said, in part:

  Some people put their trust in their wealth. Others in their beauty. Others in their intellect. Still others in their strength. But you’re likely to be disappointed if you put your total trust in any of these.

  The giver of each of these is God, not you. You have been given strength or beauty or intelligence in order to let you experience humility and duty. Certainly not pride. There are people who say, “I earn my money by hard work,” which is true in a limited sense. But who gave them the ability to work hard?

  We should realize that God is in charge. Ultimately we must call on God for solutions. His purposes are wiser than ours. Excessive worry only increases the problems, whereas prayer and thanksgiving to God for help in solving problems often lead to surprising solutions.

  My mother reared my brother and me on the philosophy that only God could protect us from mistake and harm. She could not. For example, one time we were taking a canoe trip down a small and dangerous river. We couldn’t call home at sundown as planned because our canoe had sunk. Four hours after nightfall we finally hiked to a phone. Our mother promptly drove out and picked us up. She hadn’t worried about us. She knew that we were children of God and that he would watch over us. There was no reason for her to worry endlessly.

  Since then I have always tried to think up every possible solution to a problem and then go to sleep at night, confident that through prayer God will guide me.

  Every age produces individuals who possess an extraordinary capacity for acquiring wealth. They seem to possess a talent for accumulating material goods at a rapid rate. Less successful people—including those who may have great aspirations to “make it big” but have not yet reached real wealth—often wonder: “Do I really have what it takes to reach the top? Will I be capable of finding strategies and arriving at solutions that will secure my family’s financial well-being?”

  John Templeton and his parents were severely pinched by the depression of 1932. Yet this relati
vely poor southern boy had the seeds of success in his personality, and he nurtured those seeds into full bloom in his adult life as an investment sage. How did he arrive at the solutions that made this possible?

  From the beginning, part of Templeton’s formula for material success was simplicity itself. He had studied both history and economics with great care. He worked hard, and he was not afraid to discover new frontiers. Thus he positioned himself to arrive at solutions, whose effects are still being felt by his clients more than forty years later.

  To quote from a talk he gave to shareholders at the July 1985 annual meeting in Toronto:

  I remember a time when every bank in America closed and 3,000 banks never reopened. In those days there was no government guarantee of bank deposits. There was no social security. There was no unemployment insurance. There was no feeling on the part of voters that the government should help.

  Banks are not likely to fail again because governments will rescue them. But every method of rescue we have studied so far, worldwide over twenty years, results in more money in the hands of the public. It results in more inflation.

  In 1931, when there were bankruptcies of 3,000 banks, the thing to do to protect one’s assets was to invest in money—in cash—because in those days you had deflation. Now you don’t have deflation, you have inflation. So if you want to protect your wealth against this tremendous problem, invest in things that are not fixed in terms of so many dollars like a bank deposit, or a bond, or a mortgage. Invest in those things that represent a share in the ownership of a productive asset and may go up in value as the dollar loses its purchasing power.

  Those things are mainly real estate and common stocks.