Teach me to be a hacker

The title was to bring people in cause most people like to flame and or laugh at these threads. Now before you get your flamers ready please read the post. This post is more of a theory rather then please make me 1337!?!. So I want to start to learn ethical hacking and just want to make sure my theory on learning is correct.

Learn to...
Hide yourself - Can't hide yourself won't last long
-Using public wifi
-Securing public wifi
-Mac spoofing
-Mac cloning
-?
Find targets - Can't find someone can't make money
-Google
-News paper
-TV
-?
Find info on targets - Genral information to help you with next stop
-Google
-Social Engineering
-Dumpster Diving
-Company website (if they have it)
-?
Connect - Need to find a way in and then how to employ it
-?
Stop alerts and not cause them - Need to stay in
-?
Get past logins - Might be needed for info or files etc
-(X) Brute forcer
-?
Find/get info you need on machines - For proof there systems were not secure
-CMD
-Shell
Employ a backdoor - Encase you need to show them something and need a fast way in
-Self made
-?
Clean tracks of any trace to you - If they can find you then you are not going get paid as much, they will see it as Well they might gotten in but we can caught them.
-Script that log ins to routers and clears logs
-Some basic computer cleaner (CCleaner)
-?
Submit report to company - If you can not submit it in a none tech terminology they will not understand and might Effect your business
-English classes
-PowerPoint knowledge
-?
Clean up anything left behind - Backdoor / wire mess / computers / passwords that you might of changed etc.
-Detailed logs of what you did on the system and what you used in the testing
-?

This is in order of how I would see you would audit a company and find a company to audit. I would love some books or links to info for on the subjects that I listed if they are correct. I do not want to be spoon feed, I have no problem putting in time to read and test. I do not think there are magical hacking 1 hit OMGOWNZ!?!! ZOMG1337?!! Linux distros or tools. I believe that people that do this never stop learning and work very hard to gain and keep up with the knowledge that is needed to be able to have this skill set. I understand if I get flamed or if I get no feed back at all. This is something most people don't like to help answer because of the skipt kiddies that are out there. Like I said I am just looking for books or info on what area I should be looking for and if the things I listed under the areas is correct or in the right ball park.