Page 257 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

do? What can you do especially well? What can you do skillfully that most
people do indifferently? What need exists which you could fill? These are
just a few of the searching questions which you should ask yourself before
attempting to sell your services. If you can find the right answers to these
questions, you will have little difficulty in establishing yourself in a personal
service business.

Now there is a difference between selling your services and getting a job. In
one case you are what is called an entrepreneur, while in the other case you
are an employee. Just what is an entrepreneur? He is a man who takes the
risks that go with a business venture, and profits or loses in proportion to
those risks. He derives his income from customers or clients, as the case may
be, rather than from an employer. The entrepreneur may be, and usually does
become, an employer. But he still assumes the risks and the possibilities for
profit that go with them. It is from the entrepreneur class that most of our
successful business men, merchants and manufacturers come. They usually
got their start selling their own services. Then, as they acquired skill and
knowledge, they branched out and sold the services of others on whom they
in turn made a profit.

It is an axiom of success that to receive the applause of the multitude you
must find out what your public wants and then do it better than anyone else in
the world is doing it. The foregoing applies particularly to artists— those
whose services take the form of entertaining or educating people. But it also
applies to less colorful work. To achieve success in any human activity, you
must excel others. When you have done that, your reputation will be made
and your success will be assured.

The thing which you select to do need not be—in fact, it should not be—a
broad activity. The more you concentrate your interest, the more quickly you
will succeed. In Chicago, there is an advertising man who discovered twenty
years ago that very few men knew how to write inspirational letters to
salesmen. He further discovered that there was a need for interesting,
practical, informative letters which would actually help salesmen to meet
successfully the difficult problems they daily encountered. So he quit his job
and offered his services to sales managers of companies which employed