Unless you are a leader in your work, you cannot succeed greatly because great people know how to lead others. If your work is making, handling or creating things, or if it is using words, or if it is managing and directing people, you do not succeed unless you lead in your particular line of work.

There are thousands-yes, millions-of people who work well and faithfully from youth to old age. Yet, they never attain to that which we call success. By efficient work, they just hold their own. They do not succeed greatly, because they do not lead in the work they do.

But; if you make better things than others make, or make them a little more rapidly, or more efficiently, you lead in making things and your reward is success in that line.

If you handle things more effectively than others handle them, you become a leader in handling things, and your leadership brings you success.

If you create things-that is, discover or invent them-you become a leader by creating things, and attain to success, providing that you render service by marketing the things you create.

If you work with words, you may use them as does a copyist, or a stenographer, and not succeed greatly in life. In using words, the stenographer is usually a follower-following the use of words, which are dictated by another.

So long as the stenographer remains a follower in the use of words, he can improve his position only by increase of speed, or accuracy, or neatness. But, if in part, he becomes a leader in the use of words-able to use them so that he can take charge of a part of the correspondence of his employer-he becomes a leader in his field, and his compensation is doubled.

There is always a possibility of securing increased compensation and abundance, by one phase of leadership-no matter in what field of work you find yourself!

Of course, there are other fields of leadership in the use of words. The person who thinks vividly and expresses himself in vivid imagery, leads all others. He becomes the great author, the great dramatist, the great orator, the great preacher, the great attorney, or the great public leader who inspires us and leads us to a higher and more efficient life.

In justice, the compensation, which the world gives, not only for different kinds of work, but for leadership in each kind of work, varies. If you lead in doing things, you receive a certain compensation. If you lead in using words, you receive a greater compensation. If you lead in handling people, you attain to the great reward-for, such leadership is the most difficult and the most needed.

There are only three fields of work: (1) making, handling, or creating things, (2) using words; and (3) leading and directing people.

Choose the field in which you wish to lead, on the dual basis of ability and service-the field in which you can render the greatest service to others for the longest time. Your native ability is the first factor, which determines your choice, and the needs of others is the second. Of this second factor, it seems unnecessary to write a word-for you know that you will fail if you choose a work which others do not need, just as you would fail if you should invest in a factory to make one-horse shays!

Determine your skill set, become a leader in that skill set, find a need and start trying to fill it. Then hold on to your hat because you're on the way to becoming an entrepreneur.