Step #2: Develop good plans for today, your future, your health and your marriage. Implement your plans as soon as you finished developing them. You wouldn’t start building house until the plans were finished. What if you just started laying bricks and someone asks, “What are you building?” You answer, “I have no idea.”

Don’t start to implement today’s plan, for example, until you at least have an outline. Leave some flexibility to improvise and adopt additional strategies. The plan for any period of time will lead to more success if you have some idea what you will do before you do it. A good strategy is to sit with your family toward the end of the year and create a plan for the next year; you should do the same with your financial advisor.

When I finally learned to do that, my family members knew where they appeared on my calendar. My business meetings and obligations, lectures and seminars were clearly marked on my calendar, but one day my children asked, “Where are we on your game plan?” It’s important to include your children, spouse and friends on your calendar.

Step #3: Learn how to handle the passing of time. It takes time to build a career and make changes, so give your project time to develop and your staff time to learn, grow, change, develop and produce. Most importantly, give yourself time. It takes time to master new ideas, strategies and skills. It takes time to change and refine your philosophy and activities, gain momentum and achieve. It is easy to be impatient with yourself.

My mother taught me a little bit about playing the piano. She showed me the left-hand scale, and I understand that easy enough. Then, she taught me the right-hand scale, and I learned those as well. Then, one day she said, “Today, you will learn how to play both hands at the same time.” One hand at a time was easy, but simultaneously was a real challenge.

With practice, I was finally able to play the scales with both hands. She wasn’t finished, however, because then she wanted me to read the music and play with both hands. I thought, “I can’t do that.” I was a bit confused at first, but finally I mastered it. Then, she expected me to watch an audience, read the music and play with both hands. I thought, “Now, that is really impossible!”

By mastering each step in the process before moving to the next step, I was able to watch the audience, read the music and play with both hands. The lesson is to give yourself time, and you’ll learn how to master the art of time management, you’ll become a better school owner, you’ll master the art of parenting and you’ll work better with your spouse as partners.

Step #4: Learn to solve problems: business, family, financial, emotional, etc. Treat these challenges as opportunities to grow. Change if you must, modify if you must, and discard an old philosophy that wasn’t working well for a new one. The best phrase my mentor ever gave me was when he said, “Mr. Rohn, if you will change, then everything will change for you.” Wow, I took that to heart, and sure enough the more I changed, the more everything changed for me.

Learn to master good ideas, develop good plans, handle the passing of time and solve problems, and you will be on your way to more success than you could ever imagine!

To start any part-time or full-time business, you typically need plenty of capital (money); but, occasionally, you’ll hear stories about people who made fortunes without capital. They were able to beat the odds because they had learned that there are more valuable “assets” than capital that can lead to entrepreneurial success.

1. Time is a form of capital more valuable than the money form of capital. “Time capital” is the time you set aside not to be wasted, not to be given away. It’s the time invested in an enterprise that brings value to the marketplace, which results in profit to you. Time properly invested is worth a fortune. Time wasted can be devastation. Time invested can perform miracles, so you invest your time, wisely.

2. Desperation was my friend Lydia’s first major investment in her new enterprise. She said, “My kids are hungry, I must make this work. If this doesn’t work, then what will I do?” She invested one dollar in her enterprise to sell a product she believed the market would buy. That dollar bought a few fliers, so she could make a retail sale and then use that money to buy the product wholesale to deliver back to the customer.

My friend Bill Bailey was just a teenager when he went to Chicago after high school. His first job was a night janitor. Someone asked, “Bill, why would you settle for night janitor?” He answered, “Malnutrition.” You work any job when you’re hungry. Now, years later, Bill is a recipient of the Horatio Alger award, rich and powerful and one of the great examples of the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Desperation can be a powerful incentive and, therefore, more important capital than money.

3. Determination means, “I will.” First, Lydia said, “I must find a customer,” which is desperation. Second, she said, “I will find one customer before the end of the day.” She did, which prompted her to conclude, “If I can find one, then I can find a second;” however, But the prospective customer said, “No.” In that case, you must turn to courage.

4. Courage is also more valuable than capital. If you only have one dollar $1 and much courage, then you have a good future; you have courage, in spite of the circumstances. Humans can do the most incredible things, regardless of what happens. History and the media are filled with the stories of courage and incredible results. You can’t sell humans short. Once Lydia made three or four sales, she put her “ambition capital” to work.

5. Ambition is “Wow! If I can sell 3, then I can sell 33 and then 103.” Lydia is now dazzled by her dreams of the future.

6. Faith is believing you have a good product or service and a good company, which leads to higher levels of self-esteem and motivation to succeed. These are unmatched investments that money can’t equal. You’d be poor if you had a million dollars and no faith. Add ingenuity and you’ll be really rich.

7. Ingenuity is putting more of your brain to work – instead of the 10% most people use, try applying the other 90%. You may not believe what can happen. Humans can create the most intriguing things to do. Ingenuity is also more valuable than money. All you need is one dollar and plenty of ingenuity, and then make it work and work.

8. Heart and soul can’t be substituted with money. You can have a million dollars, without heart and soul, but you’ll have no life. You are ineffective. Heart and soul is the unseen magic that moves people to buy, make decisions and respond.

9. Personality is your unique signature. Develop your personality, so it’s effective with whomever and wherever you use it. Bill Bailey, my mentor, taught me that you must learn to be just as comfortable watching the fights in a moderate home in Kentucky or attending high-tea at a Georgian mansion in Washington, D.C. Learn to maintain your personality and move with ease among the rich and poor. These are opportunities to create unique relationships.

10. Charisma and sophistication are important assets that will help you project your personality in any situation. Charisma, with a touch of humility, touches others in positive ways. Cultivate sophistication, not to be a snob, but so others recognize you know much about the world and its peoples and cultures.

With one dollar in money capital and this list of more valuable capital assets, you can achieve any goals. The secret is capital; the kind of capital that is more valuable than money and that can secure your future and fortune.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be motivated to achieve by such a lofty goal as benevolence? I must confess, however, that in the early years of my struggle to succeed, my motivation was much more down-to-earth. My reason for succeeding was more basic. In fact, it fell into the category of what I like to call “nitty-gritty reasons.” A nitty-gritty reason is the kind that any of us can have at any time, on any day – and it can cause our lives to change. Let me tell you what happened to me…

I was lounging at home one day, when I heard a knock at the door. It was a timid, hesitant knock. When I opened the door I saw a pair of big brown eyes staring at me. There stood a frail, little girl of about ten. She told me, with all the courage and determination her little heart could muster, that she was selling Girl Scout cookies. It was a masterful presentation – several flavors, a special deal and only two dollars per box. How could anyone refuse? Finally, with a big smile and ever so politely, she asked me to buy. I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to!

Except for one thing. I didn’t have two dollars! Boy, was I embarrassed! Here I was – a father, had been to college and was gainfully employed – and, yet, I didn’t have two dollars to my name.

Naturally, I couldn’t tell the little girl with the big brown eyes, so I did the next best thing. I lied to her. I said, “Thanks, but I’ve already bought Girl Scout cookies this year; and I still have plenty stacked in the house.”Now that simply wasn’t true, but it was the only thing I could think of to get me off the hook, and it did. The little girl said, “That’s okay, sir. Thank you very much.” She turned around and went on her way.

I stared after her for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, I closed the door behind me and, leaning my back to it, cried, “I don’t want to live like this anymore. I’ve had it with being broke, and I’ve had it with lying. I’ll never be embarrassed again by not having any money in my pocket.” That day I promised myself to earn enough to have several hundred dollars always in my pocket at all times.

This is what I mean by a nitty-gritty reason. It may not win me any prize for greatness, but it was enough to have a permanent effect on the rest of my life.

My Girl-Scout-cookie story does have a happy ending. Several years later, as I was walking from my bank where I had just made a hefty deposit, I saw two little girls who were selling candy for some girls’ organization. One of them approached me and asked, “Mister, would you like to buy some candy?”

“I probably would,” I said playfully.

“What kind of candy do you have?”

“It’s almond roca.”

“Almond roca. That’s my favorite.

How much is it?” “It’s only two dollars.”

Two dollars. It couldn’t be! I was excited.

“How many boxes do you have?”

“I have five.

”Looking at her friend, I said,

“How many boxes do you have left?”

“I have four.”

“That’s nine. Okay, I’ll take them all.

”At this, both girls’ mouths fell open as they exclaimed in unison, “Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll pass them around to some of my friends.”

Excitedly, they scurried to stack all the boxes together. I reached into my pocket and gave them eighteen dollars. As I was about to leave, the boxes tucked under my arm, one of the girls said, “Mister, you’re really something!” How about that! Can you imagine spending only eighteen dollars and have someone look you in the face and say, “You’re really something!

”Now you know why I always carry a few hundred dollars on me. I’m not about to miss opportunities like that ever again.

To think it all resulted from my own embarrassment, that when properly channeled, acted as a powerful motivator to help me achieve.

How about you? What nitty-gritty reasons do you have waiting to challenge and provoke you into change for the better? Look for them; they are there. It can sometimes be as simple as a brown-eyed girl selling Girl Scout cookies.