Dan Kennedy: How Serious Are You?

Dan Kennedy, The Millionaire Maker

For reasons you don’t need to know, I recently found myself dragging from a shelf a huge book titled ‘Designing Casinos To Dominate The Competition’ by the pre-eminent expert in that niche, Bill Friedman. The book is big in page size, 9 x 12”, and contains 629 pages. Care is needed in lifting. It’s not a book you sit on the couch and read; you need it resting flat on desk or table.

Its entire 629 pages is devoted to but one ‘little’ subject, the physical lay-out of the casino: ceiling heights, walkways, colors, every picayune detail known to influence bettor behavior or satisfaction. Obviously this is only one aspect of the complex business of operating a casino. Not addressed here are games, personnel, finances, advertising, marketing, promotion and much more. This giant tome is focused on just the design.

I wonder how many people are so thorough and knowledgeable and detailed about each broken-out aspect of their businesses to be able to fill 629 pages discussing it?

I wonder how many have visited, stayed and studied the 50 top businesses in their industry, taking copious notes of every little detail?

I know the number is small. Tiny. Miniscule. Maybe in the 1% range, which, not coincidentally, is the same percentage of the population that gets rich.

I’ve been consulting with small business owners, mid-sized company owners, up to Fortune 500 CEO’s for 30 years. Very, very, very few know 629 pages worth of factual, in-depth information about their entire business, let alone a single, isolated aspect of it.

They aren’t serious students of their own business, let alone anything more.

The world is full of people who wish for, hope for, have ambition for, and even strive to attain results and rewards that are wholly unreasonable, given their casualness, their superficial interest, their lack of commitment to being so knowledgeable about every aspect of their business that the rewards they seek are not only justified but inevitable.

When I find someone earning a disappointing income, I usually find that size of their knowledge account correlates with the balance in their bank account. The frequency and size of deposits being made to their knowledge base matches up nicely with the frequency and size of the deposits made to their bank account. Bluntly, the person who is too busy or too lazy and undisciplined or too cheap to systematically, strategically, continuously grow his depth of understanding about all the aspects of his business – by study, by association – will find it nearly impossible to grow his income.

No, knowledge is not power, if not acted on productively. But lots of action on too little knowledge, too simplistic and superficial understanding, is just as useless. Tiring, too.