01. Decide exactly what kind of a job you want. If the job doesn’t already exist, perhaps you can create it.
02. Choose the company, or individual for whom you wish to work.
03. Study your prospective employer, as to policies, personnel, and chances of advancement.
04. By analysis of yourself, your talents and capabilities, figure what you can offer, and plan ways and means of giving advantages, services, developments, ideas that you believe you can successfully deliver.
We come now to the major faults of leaders who fail, because it is just as essential to know what not to do as it is to know what to do.
01. Inability to organize details. Efficient leadership calls for ability to organize and to master details. No genuine leader is ever “too busy” to do anything which may be required of him in his capacity as leader. When a man, whether he is a leader or follower, admits that he is “too busy” to change his plans, or to give attention to any emergency, he admits his inefficiency. The successful leader must be the master of all details connected with his position. That means, of course, that he must acquire the habit of relegating details to capable lieutenants.
The following are important factors of leadership:—
01. Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.
02. Self control. The man who cannot control himself, can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
03. A keen sense of justice. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers.
The remainder of this chapter has been given over to a description of ways and means of marketing personal services. The information here conveyed will be of practical help to any person having any form of personal services to market, but it will be of priceless benefit to those who aspire to leadership in their chosen occupations.
Intelligent planning is essential for success in any undertaking designed to accumulate riches. Here will be found detailed instructions to those who must begin the accumulation of riches by selling personal services.
We see men who have accumulated great fortunes, but we often recognize only their triumph, overlooking the temporary defeats which they had to surmount before “arriving.”
No follower of this philosophy can reasonably expect to accumulate a fortune without experiencing “temporary defeat.” When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal. If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a “quitter.” A quitter never wins–and–a winner never quits. Lift this sentence out, write it on a piece of paper in letters an inch high, and place it where you will see it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning before you go to work.
No individual has sufficient experience, education, native ability, and knowledge to insure the accumulation of a great fortune, without the cooperation of other people. Every plan you adopt, in your endeavor to accumulate wealth, should be the joint creation of yourself and every other member of your “Master Mind” group. You may originate your own plans, either in whole or in part, but see that those plans are checked, and approved by the members of your “master mind” alliance.
If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan, if this new plan fails to work, replace it, in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
The imaginative faculty functions in two forms. One is known as “synthetic imagination,” and the other as “creative imagination.”
Synthetic Imagination:—Through this faculty, one may arrange old concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations. This faculty creates nothing. It merely works with the material of experience, education, and observation with which it is fed. It is the faculty used most by the inventor, with the exception of the “genius” who draws upon the creative imagination, when he cannot solve his problem through synthetic imagination.
If you have the imagination, and seek a more profitable outlet for your personal services, this suggestion may be the stimulus for which you have been searching. The idea is capable of yielding an income far greater than that of the “average” doctor, lawyer, or engineer whose education required several years in college. The idea is saleable to those seeking new positions, in practically all positions calling for managerial or executive ability, and those desiring re-arrangement of incomes in their present positions.
