“Have you added value to someone’s life today?” Sharon Lechter’s father asked her that question every night before bed. Twenty years after his death, she still asks herself. It’s also the question that helped her build a financial education empire that’s reached millions.

After a career in public accounting, in the late 80’s, Sharon partnered with the inventor of talking children’s books and did licensing deals with companies like Disney and Warner Brothers to excite children about reading again. In the late 90’s, she co-authored Rich Dad Poor Dad, 14 other Rich Dad books and was the founding CEO of the Rich Dad brand, and sparked a global movement in changing how people think about money. She’s advised Presidents Bush and Obama on financial literacy, and collaborated with the Napoleon Hill Foundation on multiple bestsellers.

Now she appears in the new film Pillars of Power: The Hidden Secret Behind Achieving Greatness alongside Jack Canfield, Dr. Joe Vitale, Ken Honda, Marie Diamond, Dr. John Demartini, John Assaraf, and Jerry Sargeant. 

“Greatness, to me, means impact,” Sharon says. “It means you’re impacting the world in a positive way, and it comes from within, from your intention and what you want to do for the world.”

That drive to add value started with her father’s nightly question and became the foundation for everything she’s built since. But Sharon learned something else along the way: greatness doesn’t come from waiting for other people to validate you.