If you are looking for strippers, sex and drunkenness you’re in the wrong place. Move on. (Well, actually, there are strippers and sex….you’ll have to read on to get the rest of the story.)

Your heart may be in the right place, but you can still fail if you don’t have the right tools. In order to illustrate that principle I need to tell you about my bachelor party.

Twenty-four years ago I got married. On the night before the wedding, my best man and I had a party. It was a wild one; out of this world you might say. After the rehersal we went back to my little one-bedroom apartment number “A” at 401 N. Ann Street in Columbia, Missouri and had a prayer meeting. Oh, we talked some, and I’m sure we drank some lemonade or ice tea (not the kind that comes from Long Island, either) but mostly we prayed about my upcoming marriage. Same goes for the wedding night. I knelt beside that bridal bed and asked God to bless our union.

Fast forward nine years and you’d have found me in the abyss of the greatest and only significant failure in my life as I signed the papers allowing a judge to dissove that marriage. I still reflect on that today—15 years later. Most recently it occurred to me that you can have the best, most honorable, and most noble intentions (and I promise you I did) and still fail if you don’t also have the right tools (and obviously I didn’t).

Today, my life and work is really about helping people find the right tools to succeed, in business and in life. In the process we buy, rehab and sell hundreds of properties, while also designing financial plans, loaning money, making an occasional speech, leading a couple of small groups, and a variety of other things. But the focused intention of that effort is giving people the right tools for success.

I got to this little parable by thinking about a friend of mine. His marriage is on the rocks. A quarter of a century ago his bachelor party included strippers and all that comes with that. Hmmm. Mine started nobly, his in sin. But the result was the same. Neither of us had the tools.

I know that you largely have good intentions. But do you have the tools to deliver on that intention? If you don’t, what are you doing to get those tools? Somebody said “You are who you are because of the books you read and the people you hang around with.” What are you reading? Who are you hanging with?

The road to Hell is paved with good intention. You’ve got to proactively reach out and grab the tools for success.