Three Feet from Gold by Sharon L. Lechter Summary

Three Feet from Gold by Sharon L. Lechter and Greg Reid is a business allegory that teaches the importance of perseverance in achieving success. The book follows a struggling entrepreneur named Greg who embarks on a journey to interview successful business leaders and learns that most failures happen when people quit just before reaching their breakthrough. Based on Napoleon Hill's principles, the story illustrates how obstacles can be transformed into opportunities through persistence, expert guidance, and unwavering belief.

Sharon L. Lechter is a certified public accountant, entrepreneur, and bestselling author best known for co-authoring Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki. As a financial literacy advocate and former CEO of the Rich Dad Company, Lechter collaborated with the Napoleon Hill Foundation to write Three Feet from Gold, bringing her expertise in financial education and business success to modernize Hill's timeless principles about persistence and achievement for contemporary readers facing economic challenges.

Three Feet from Gold is ideal for entrepreneurs, business professionals, and anyone facing obstacles in their personal or career goals. The book particularly resonates with individuals who feel stuck, are considering giving up on their dreams, or struggle with setbacks and failures. Sales professionals, startup founders, and career changers will find actionable insights from the real-world examples of successful business leaders who overcame adversity by refusing to quit when success was within reach.

Three Feet from Gold remains highly relevant in 2025, especially during economic uncertainty and career transitions. The book's core message about persistence and resilience applies universally to modern challenges like entrepreneurship, career pivots, and business adaptation. Sharon L. Lechter's financial literacy perspective combined with Greg Reid's storytelling creates an accessible guide that transforms Napoleon Hill's 1930s wisdom into practical strategies for today's professionals navigating rapid change, making it a worthwhile investment for personal and professional development.

The central lesson of Three Feet from Gold is to never give up when you're close to achieving your goals. Sharon L. Lechter and Greg Reid emphasize that most failures occur not from lack of ability, but from quitting too soon—often just moments before a breakthrough. The book teaches that success requires combining persistence with expert guidance, working within your strengths, and maintaining unwavering belief in your vision even when facing significant obstacles and temporary setbacks.

The R.U. Darby story is the foundational parable in Three Feet from Gold about a gold miner who gave up and sold his mining equipment, only to discover the buyer struck gold just three feet from where Darby stopped digging. This powerful narrative illustrates how Darby wasn't truly passionate about gold mining but later applied the lessons from this failure to succeed in the insurance industry. The story demonstrates that failure is temporary and teaches the importance of persistence, self-awareness about your true passions, and learning from setbacks.

Sharon L. Lechter introduces a specific success equation in Three Feet from Gold: ((P+T) x A x A) + B = Success, where B represents Belief. This formula emphasizes that technical skills and actions must be multiplied by other factors, but belief serves as the foundational element that makes success possible. The equation suggests that without genuine belief in your goals, even perfect planning and execution will fall short, making mindset and conviction critical components of achieving any significant accomplishment.

Three Feet from Gold outlines three essential steps for achieving success: seek expert advice when working outside your competence, never give up when you're three feet from gold, and mentor others by sharing your lessons once you achieve success. These principles emphasize the importance of humility in learning from those with proven expertise, persistence through challenges, and giving back to help others avoid the mistakes you made, creating a cycle of knowledge transfer that benefits entire communities.

"Three feet from gold" is a metaphor for being extremely close to success but giving up before achieving it. In Sharon L. Lechter's book, this phrase represents the critical moment when persistence matters most—when obstacles seem insurmountable but breakthroughs are actually imminent. The concept teaches that success often requires pushing through the final, most difficult phase when quitting feels easiest, and that many people fail not from lack of ability but from abandoning their goals just before reaching their destination.

Three Feet from Gold is an official publication of the Napoleon Hill Foundation that modernizes principles from Think and Grow Rich. Sharon L. Lechter worked directly with the Foundation to translate Hill's 1930s success philosophy into contemporary business scenarios through a narrative format. The book references Andrew Carnegie's 1908 letter to Napoleon Hill and uses the same foundational principles about persistence, definiteness of purpose, and mastermind alliances, but presents them through modern entrepreneurial stories and interviews with 21st-century business leaders.

Three Feet from Gold teaches that persistence combined with passion creates unstoppable momentum toward success. Sharon L. Lechter emphasizes that true persistence isn't stubbornly pursuing the wrong path, but rather refusing to give up on goals aligned with your genuine strengths and passions. The book stresses working your strengths rather than weaknesses, seeking expert guidance when needed, and understanding that temporary failures are simply feedback mechanisms guiding you toward the right approach, not reasons to abandon your ultimate objective.

Three Feet from Gold provides practical strategies for transforming business obstacles into opportunities through real examples from successful entrepreneurs. The book shows how to reframe setbacks by seeking expert mentorship, identifying whether you're working in your passion area, and maintaining belief during challenging periods. Through stories like Genevieve Bos's Pink magazine franchise model, readers learn creative problem-solving approaches such as licensing and adaptation when facing competitive pressure, demonstrating that obstacles often signal the need for strategic pivots rather than complete abandonment of goals.