The law of increasing returns states that the quantity and quality of the extra service you offer will come back to you greatly multiplied.

Consider the farmer who plants a crop of wheat. If he harvested only one grain of wheat for each grain he planted, he would be wasting his time. Instead, every successful grain produces a stalk containing many more grains. Of course, a few don’t sprout, and he has to discipline his disappointment, but whatever problems a farmer may face, getting back many times more wheat grains than he or she planted is not one of them.

And so it is with everything you do in the service you render. If you render service worth a hundred dollars, and put your heart towards it, chances are you will get back not only those one hundred dollars but many times more than that.

If you offer extra service unwillingly or resentfully, you will probably get nothing back. It is as if the farmer had sown his wheat on the highway instead of the fertile field.

Many years before, one rainy afternoon, an elderly woman walked into a Philadelphia department store. Most of the employees ignored her, but one young man asked if he could help her. When she replied that she was just waiting for the rain to end, he did not try to sell her something that she did not want. Instead he brought her a chair.

When the rain stopped, the elderly woman thanked the young man and asked for his card. A few months passed, and the owner of the store received a letter asking that this young man be sent to Scotland to take orders for furnishing an entire mansion! The letter writer was the elderly woman for whom the clerk had provided a chair. By the time the young clerk had his bags packed for Scotland, he was made a partner in that department store.

This was the result of the Law of Increasing Returns, all because he had shown a little concern and courtesy to an elderly woman when no one else would!