John Earl Shoaff (March 21, 1916 – September 6, 1965).
He was an entrepreneur and philosopher who was widely known as “The Millionaire Maker.”
Mr. Shoaff is credited in nearly every speech that Jim Rohn has given, as the smart man that shaped his future. Jim Rohn (1930–2009), a legendary motivational speaker and writer whose work helped launch or further the career of many others in the personal development industry, including Anthony Robbins, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, and Jack Canfield.
Mr. Shoaff is also credited as hving direct influence on the early lives of Zig Ziglar and Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kaye Cosmetics fame. At the age of 25, Rohn heard a “laws of success” lecture given by Shoaff and went to work for him.
My two absolute favorite John Earl Shoaff quotes:
- “Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”
- “This is not all the company pays…it’s all they pay YOU!”
Some other of Mr.Shoaff’s quotes include:
- “Don’t trust your memory, keep a journal.”
- “Profits are better than wages.”
- “It doesn’t cost too much, the truth is, you can’t afford it!”
- “The true mark of greatness is not found in what a person does with their own life. It is found in helping others discover that, they too, can become great.”
- “Nothing comes to us, everything comes through us from us. Everything in this world that happens to us comes from in here, not out here.”
- “Let’s not be moons, the reflector of the light. Let’s be suns. Let’s be the creator of the light – the creator of ideas. We all have the capacity.”
Mr. Shoaff was born Point Grove, Pennsylvania to a very humble family. He had a weak heart. He worked in a dry cleaning business and worked his way up to manager, learning everything there is to know about the business. He eventually opened his own dry cleaning business which he named “Earl’s Cleaners” in Michigan.
The Michigan Winters were getting rough on Shoaff’s elderly parents, so, in 1950, they moved to Long Beach, California. Shoaff got a job at Desmond’s department store pressing suits and settled into daily California life.
The Shoaff’s next door neighbor, took him to a success lecture in Long Beach given by Dr. J. B. Jones in the early part of 1953. Jones was a firm believer of the laws of success and toured the county giving lectures on how anyone who applied these laws could be, do and have anything they wanted.
Dr. Jones wrote a book in the 1950s titled “The Success Quadrant” that captures his philosophy and reveals the origins of Earl Shoaff and Jim Rohn’s success.
More to come later…