The following is an excerpt from the November 1986 issue of SUCCESS written former President Ronald Reagan. The advice offered is as applicable today as it was in 1986.

America is the greatest success story the world has known. In this special place between the oceans is land of endless opportunity destined to draw dreamers from every corner of the globe. For generations, Americans have discovered there is no limit to what faith and hard work can achieve when men and women are free to follow their dreams. Success was meant to happen here.

Today there are 15 million small businesses, including 600,000 minority-owned businesses. These engines of opportunity are run by the same kind of people who were my neighbors long ago in Illinois. These entrepreneurs reaching for success are imaginative and hardworking, ready to adapt to changes in the economy, and able to manage risks, improve efficiency, serve their communities and create new jobs.

What drives them? It is the urge to excel, the passion of their ideas, and the thrill that is the essence of entrepreneurship. What nourishes them? Our freedom.

Entrepreneurs share a faith in a bright future. They have a clear vision of where they are going and what they are doing, and they have a pressing need to succeed. If I didn’t know better, I would be tempted to say that entrepreneur is another word for American. Today’s entrepreneurial spirit is what made America great and kept her strong, safe and free. Today’s entrepreneurs are the promise of tomorrow because these special people hold in their hands and in their hearts a vision of the future that will create a richer and more rewarding life for all mankind.

Despite our success, we are not a selfish people. America has been truly blessed in all the days of our history because we want to help our friends and neighbors. That is the way it was on the frontier when people got together in the free spirit of volunteerism to raise a neighbor’s barn. That is the way it was in Dixon, Ill., when I was growing up. I didn’t know at the time, because the government never told me, but mine was a poor family. And yet my blessed mother prepared food to share with other families that had less than we did.

That spirit of volunteerism is alive today. We see it in the spirit of Eugene Lang, who one day went back to the New York elementary school he attended—P.S. 121 in Harlem—and promised everyone in the sixth grade that if they graduated from school and were admitted to college, he would personally guarantee their tuition.

We see the same spirit in Bonita Bergin, who decided that man’s best friend could also be man’s best helper. She created Canine Companions for Independence, and today 200 specially trained dogs are helping disabled people throughout the country increase their independence. These dogs pull their owners in wheelchairs, turn light switches on and off, retrieve items, and warn the deaf of a baby’s cry, an alarm’s clock buzzer and a telephone’s ring. Willing volunteers, corporate and personal gifts, and private foundations have made Bonita’s work possible.

Sometimes, private corporations have taken the lead with private sector initiatives that promote community partnerships and enrich all of our lives. In Oakland, Calif., the Clorox Co. created Project Joy, which stands for Job Opportunities for Youth. Project Joy trains young people in the art of getting a job and holding on to it. Avon Products makes it possible for disadvantaged children to give their families Christmas gifts. In Boston, the Polaroid Corp. trains 500 unemployed inner-city people each year for worthwhile jobs and then follows up to make certain they find such employment.

Last year, the American people gave almost $80 billion in charitable donations. That’s a record. But they gave so much more of themselves. It has been estimated that if government had to pay for all the things volunteers do, it would cost taxpayers another $110 billion annually.

But it is not always the poor and the troubled who need a helping hand. Sometimes a youngster needs some direction on what to do with his or her life.

There have been many wonderful people in my life who have helped me along the way. When I was a lifeguard in Dixon, I met Sid Altschuler of Kansas City. I taught his daughters to swim, and Sid was kind enough to take a personal interest in me. This was during the Depression, and there were few men who could look beyond themselves to ask a kid what he was going to do for a living.

He spoke to me about the “undreamed-of directions” I could follow “to a great future, once you are in. That’s the important thing now,” he said, “getting in. So start knocking on doors. Tell anyone who’ll listen that you believe you have a future in their business, and you’ll take any kind of job, even sweeping floors. Just get in.”

So I started knocking on doors, and soon WOC in Davenport had a new sports announcer and Lowell Park in Dixon had to find a new lifeguard.

Today’s youth would do well to take Sid Altschuler’s advice. Their lives, like so many of their elders’ lives, will go in “undreamed-of directions.” Like me, they will have many careers in their lives, because today’s world is changing even more rapidly than the world I knew when I was starting out.

Over the years, I have held many jobs and made many career changes. In my lifetime, I have done construction work, been a lifeguard, broadcast football and baseball games play-by-play, appeared in movies and on television, and served as a spokesman for a major corporation. And there were one or two other positions after that.

As Thomas Wolfe wrote: “If a man has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.”

This is the challenge of success—to find out what you can do and how well you can do it. There is no better place in this world to meet that challenge than in America. Here every man and every woman has the opportunity to live their dreams and test their talents.