Seeing all the possibilities my new publishing formula opened, I realized it was time to start building a real organization. In fact, it was way past time. Between the translating, advertising, sales, billing, production, and distribution, I was beginning to feel like I had in the old days, putting a hundred thousand miles a year on the car. Actually, maybe a little worse. I wasn’t getting any younger, you see. But how to build an organization? Start with one good person. I had Jerry in brochures. Now it was time to find a partner to grow with publishing.

Ever notice when you look at any of the really great accomplishments in history, like the birth of the American nation, it seems there are not one, but several extraordinary personalities who were contributors? Just look at Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin. Has the world ever seen such an assemblage of statesmen and intellectuals since? Many people would look at this and say it was the times, the events, that brought out the greatness in these men. Certainly true. Still, I can’t help but think that in the assemblage of the collective talents a spark was created, or rather the energy level caused a sort of spontaneous combustion that lit up the world and drove the events.

Similarly, at the beginning of any great business enterprise you find this same sort of gathering of unusual talent occurring. It’s not something that’s planned. In the beginning it just sort of happens. And then more and more talent gets attracted to the exciting new projects, as moths are attracted to light, and suddenly the combustion just happens and you know you’re dealing with something extraordinary.

But where was I going to find these kinds of great people? How would I ever attract them to a still small, relatively unexciting business like mine? Truly talented, already successful people were, undoubtedly, happy doing what they were doing. They either owned their own enterprises or were so valued and well taken care of by their present employers you’d never lure them away.

If they were already lucky enough to be really successful in their chosen field, that is. There were, I realized, two other possibilities. The first was someone may simply have chosen the wrong field to go into. It is certainly no harder to imagine a young person selecting the wrong profession than it would be to imagine that person marrying the wrong individual. Who really, after all, has any experience the first time they make one of these momentous decisions? You could easily wind up in a field that is unrewarding or where your potential is neither recognized, appreciated, nor utilized.

The fact that a talented, energetic person makes a bad career choice does not diminish him as a person. Like the hardy blade of grass that will crack through a concrete sidewalk to reach the light, so will this person’s unrealized potential break into view, if not in his professional life then in his nonwork undertakings, such as hobbies, social activities, charitable work. Show me a postman who, in his spare time, has organized and run a large Little League team, for example, and I’ll show you someone who could be managing a large number of people if he weren’t delivering mail.