Nine Things More Important than Capital by Jim Rohn

Nine Things More Important than Capital by Jim Rohn
When starting any enterprise or business, whether it is full-time or part-time, we all know the value of having plenty of capital (money). But I bet we both know or at least have heard of people who started with no capital who went on to make fortunes. How, you may ask?

Well, I believe there are actually some things that are more valuable than capital that can lead to your entrepreneurial success. Let me give you the list.

1. Time.
Time is more valuable than capital. The time you set aside not to be wasted, not to be given away. Time you set aside to be invested in an enterprise that brings value to the marketplace with the hope of making a profit. Now we have capital time.

How valuable is time? Time properly invested is worth a fortune. Time wasted can be devastation. Time invested can perform miracles, so you invest your time.

2. Desperation.
I have a friend Lydia, whose first major investment in her new enterprise was desperation. She said, "My kids are hungry, I gotta make this work. If this doesn't work, what will I do?" So she invested $1 in her enterprise selling a product she believed in. The $1 was to buy a few fliers so she could make a sale at retail, collect the money and then buy the product wholesale to deliver back to the customer.

My friend Bill Bailey went to Chicago as a teenager after he got out of high school. And the first job he got was as a night janitor. Someone said, "Bill, why would you settle for night janitor?" He said, "Malnutrition." You work at whatever you can possibly get when you get hungry. You go to work somewhere -- night janitor, it doesn't matter where it is. Years later, now Bill is a recipient of the Horatio Alger award, rich and powerful and one of the great examples of lifestyle that I know. But, his first job -- night janitor. Desperation can be a powerful incentive. When you say - I must.

3. Determination.
Determination says I will. First Lydia said, "I must find a customer." Desperation. Second, she said, "I will find someone before this first day is over." Sure enough, she found someone. She said, "If it works once, it will work again." But then the next person said, "No." Now what must you invest?

4. Courage.
Courage is more valuable than capital. If you've only got $1 and a lot of courage, I'm telling you, you've got a good future ahead of you. Courage in spite of the circumstances. Humans can do the most incredible things no matter what happens. Haven't we heard the stories? There are some recent ones from Kosovo that are some of the most classic, unbelievable stories of being in the depths of hell and finally making it out. It's humans. You can't sell humans short. Courage in spite of, not because of, but in spite of. Now once Lydia has made 3 or 4 sales and gotten going, here's what now takes over.

5. Ambition.
"Wow! If I can sell 3, I can sell 33. If I can sell 33, I can sell 103." Wow. Lydia is now dazzled by her own dreams of the future.

6. Faith.
Now she begins to believe she's got a good product. This is probably a good company. And she then starts to believe in herself. Lydia, single mother, 2 kids, no job. "My gosh, I'm going to pull it off!" Her self-esteem starts to soar. These are investments that are unmatched. Money can't touch it. What if you had a million dollars and no faith? You'd be poor. You wouldn't be rich. Now here is the next one, the reason why she's a millionaire today.

7. Ingenuity.
Putting your brains to work. Probably up until now, you've put about 1/10 of your brainpower to work. What if you employed the other 9/10? You can't believe what can happen. Humans can come up with the most intriguing things to do. Ingenuity. What's ingenuity worth? A fortune. It is more valuable than money. All you need is a $1 and plenty of ingenuity. Figuring out a way to make it work, make it work, make it work.

8. Heart and Soul.
What is a substitute for heart and soul? It's not money. Money can't buy heart and soul. Heart and soul is more valuable than a million dollars. A million dollars without heart and soul, you have no life. You are ineffective. But, heart and soul is like the unseen magic that moves people, moves people to buy, moves people to make decisions, moves people to act, moves people to respond.

9. Personality.
You've just got to spruce up and sharpen up your own personality. You've got plenty of personality. Just get it developed to where it is effective every day, it's effective no matter who you talk to - whether it is a child or whether it is a business person - whether it is a rich person or a poor person. A unique personality that is at home anywhere. One of my mentors, Bill Bailey, taught me, "You've got to learn to be just as comfortable, Mr. Rohn, whether it is in a little shack in Kentucky having a beer and watching the fights with Winfred, my old friend or in a Georgian mansion in Washington, DC as the Senator's guest." Move with ease whether it is with the rich or whether it is with the poor. And it makes no difference to you who is rich or who is poor. A chance to have a unique relationship with whomever. The kind of personality that's comfortable. The kind of personality that's not bent out of shape.

And lastly, let's not forget charisma and sophistication. Charisma with a touch of humility. This entire list is more valuable than money. With one dollar and the list I just gave you, the world is yours. It belongs to you, whatever piece of it you desire whatever development you wish for your life. I've given you the secret. Capital. The kind of capital that is more valuable than money and that can secure your future and fortune. Remember that you lack not the resources.

101st Aircraft on BusinessJet.com

Tonight we added our 101st aircraft on BusinessJet.com, an Eclipse 500. Well, maybe it is actually the 100.5 aircraft. A confidential buyer that I met this afternoon at an Eclipse function in Cincinatti, OH placed an ad for someone to share his purchase of an Eclipse 500. Anywhere from an 1/8th to 1/2 share.

This is a nice milestone and hopefully the 200th plane listed on the site will occur within the next few months.

Eclipse 500

Today I will be meeting with Joe Cozza of Eclipse at Cincinnati OH, Lunken Field (KLUK) to learn more about the Eclipse 500.

I was able to take a look at the Eclipse 500 at last year's NBAA, but this will be a good opportunity to learn more about the aircraft and it's capabilities just after it has recieved it's type certificate. It's always nice to know exactly what the perfromance specs will be rather than look at estimates.

With an order book standing at 2,500 aircraft, if Eclipse can deliver on it's promises and not be plagued by problems that come with start-up companies and weekend pilots in high performance aircraft, they could change the face of general and business aviation.

A successful Eclipse 500 opens the door wide open for the D-Jet, the FoxJet, and some of the other smaller VLJ's.

Adding an Employment Section to BusinessJet.com

I have received a lot of positive feedback about starting an employment section for BusinessJet.com and will look to move forward in the next few days/weeks. These things always seem to take a little longer than I anticipate!

New Apple Products

I know, I know. An aviation blog is no place for technology items. But, since many people in the business aviation industry actually travel I thought this would be a nice break from my normal dronings.

Apple has come out with some new iPods. An 80GB version (the largest to date) that would be nice for storing movies, and up to 20,000 songs. New and imroved Nanos with up to 8GB of memory and some colors (rather than the old black and white ones). The colors are reminicesent of the old iPod minis.

The most interesting new iPod is the new shuffle (see picture). It is incredibly small and seems like it will be a great travelling companion. It could also get lost very easily, but that that is your fault not the iPod's! Anyways, for $79 it might be a great little travelling companion.

Business Aviation and the Internet

I am in the process of signing up and making reservations for my trip to the NBAA convention in Orlando – October 17-18-19, 2006. I received an e-mail from the NBAA announcing that the entire convention floorspace had sold out for the first time in history.

What I don’t understand about a lot of the vendors is that they spend all of this money to show up in Orlando with a display and business cards and giveaways. Yet, the websites that I see within the industry are often times atrocious. Why would I (or anyone else) buy sophisticated equipment or services for myself or my business jet if the guy selling it doesn’t even have a webpage or e-mail address? Why is it acceptable in the aviation industry for everyone to have a crappy website and @aol.com e-mail address? If your bank website looked like a lot of what I see, you would definitely not consider using their online banking. Why do you trust someone to install RVSM in your Learjet, if their website looks like an 8^th grader designed it? Why does the attention to detail and commitment to excellence only exist in the hangar? Why doesn't this flow through to every aspect of the business, including marketing?

Why is that people will spend time and money to get to Orlando to tell the story of their product yet they never set up a blog and blog the brand. Start an online conversation. Send some of your products to users and invite them to discuss what happens, good or bad. If the product is good, blogging it will just spread the word even faster. If the product is not very good, at least you will tend to get your feedback faster. Then you can take that feedback and make changes.

Glass panel cockpits and extremely sophistaced electronics are dominating the business aviation industry. We shouldn’t let that technology stop at the cabin door. We need to embrace the use of the internet and bring that sophistication to all aspects of our businesses.

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 'a well-executed blogging campaign is an act of love' from gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards".

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Cessna Citation Mustang achieves type certificate!

At 4:15 p.m. today (Friday, September 8, 2006), the Federal Aviation Administration officially approved the type certificate of the Cessna Citation Mustang. Type certification comes less than a year and a half after the Mustang's first flight, with all design performance and specifications having been achieved. The type certificate was awarded ahead of Cessna's promise of certification in this year's fourth quarter.

The six-seat Citation Mustang is certified as a single-pilot, FAR Part 23 aircraft, with a cruise speed of 340 KTAS, and maximum operating altitude of 41,000 feet. The FAA type certificate provides for full use of all Mustang systems, including single-pilot operations; the only limitation being flight into known icing conditions. The Mustang will be certified for flight into known icing well before the first customer delivery.

Introduced at the 2002 NBAA convention, the Mustang is the 27th airplane Cessna has certified in a decade, more than any other aircraft manufacturer.

The Mustang Prototype made Cessna history on April 23, 2005 by completing its first flight 10 days ahead of schedule. Mustang Production Unit 1 (P1) logged its first flight a year ago, and then stole the show at NBAA in Orlando last fall.

While the Mustang is certified according to FAA's 14 CFR Part 23 Normal Category rules, Cessna has gone much farther by calculating and publishing all Mustang takeoff and initial climb performance using Part 23 Commuter category standards. The Commuter Category rules provide a significant enhancement in the level of safety during takeoff and climb-out over performance criteria of other aircraft now being certified under the Normal Category of Part 23.

And at Cessna Aircraft's structural testing facility in Wichita, technicians have stressed the Mustang airframe to a level five times the normal life of an aircraft. This is well beyond type certification requirements….and resulted in an airframe with an unlimited lifetime.

Flight Options Puts New Spin on Fractional Game

Flight Options, LLC, a leading provider of fractional shares in business aircraft and a Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), is launching an innovative purchase and use program designed to deliver up to a 15 percent increase in value through access to more hours or savings on long haul trips.

Fractional First™ delivers the increased transparency, added flexibility and simplified terms that private jet users have been asking for from fractional jet providers while simplifying the confusing and restrictive calculations that have become the industry standard.

Fractional First™ makes Flight Options the cost-effective and easy choice through benefits including:

• No Taxi Time Deduction resulting in more air time (taxi time will be paid but not deducted from share hours purchased).

• Distance-Based Pricing yielding more air time as hourly rates are based upon distance flown.

• Transparent Fuel Cost allowing customers to pay what Flight Options pays and uses rather than base price plus surcharge at a five-year fixed-usage rate.

• Flexible Use Option for utilization of 80 percent to 120 percent of share hours purchased each year and management fees only on hours used.

• Extended Service Area whereby customers pay only the fuel cost for the repositioning leg when flying outside of the Primary Service Area.

“Customers have been telling us that in addition to greater value they want the decision process to be easier,” said S. Michael Scheeringa, chief executive officer, Flight Options, LLC. “By adding Fractional First™ to our industry-leading safety record, ease of one-stop coordination and renowned personalized service, Flight Options emphasizes its commitment to customer satisfaction and strengthens its competitive position as their preferred fractional ownership resource.”