322 THE PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL POWER
It is quite possible to be successful without demonstrating any particular
initiative. Some people simply follow the tried-and-true path and become successes.
And Bill Gates and Paul Allen were smart enough about computers early on that they
surely would have been successful.
On the other hand, some people have terrific ideas but their ideas don't
make them successful because they never get beyond using those ideas to amuse
themselves and their friends. That, too, could have been the story of Gates and Allen.
But it wasn't. And that's where initiative played a huge part in the story. Bill
Gates and Paul Allen weren't content just to go along to get along. And they
weren't content to wait until someone else told them what a good idea they had.
Without initiative they could have had enough success to satiSfy most people, but
because they did have initiative, they stepped up to the plate, thought outside the
box, pushed the envelope, and had not just success but the biggest success ever
in the history of the world.In a little less than a year the business college had paid out slightly
more than $25,000 for advertising and marketing my course and for
the other expenses incidental to the operation of this newly organized
department. Meanwhile the department had collected and turned back
to the college, in tuition fees, a sum equaling the amount the college had
spent, and I took the department over as a going and self-sustaining
business, according to the terms of my contract.
As a matter of fact, this newly created department not only served
to attract students for the other departments of the college, but at
the same time the tuition fees collected through this new department
were sufficient to place it on a self-sustaining basis before the end of the
first year.
So you can see that while the college did not loan me one penny
of actual capital, it nevertheless supplied me with credit, which served
exactly the same purpose.
I said that my plan was founded on equity; that it contemplated
a benefit to all parties concerned. The benefit accruing to me was the