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.
– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit: www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com
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Awesome post. There are so many people reading, buying ebooks etc but not putting it into practice because they are not serious about their business.
We need to treat our business like…a business!
Rachael Macgregor
I have never heard of this book, but I do love the concept. To put that much effort into analyzing the successful in your industry, and then to create a tome (this is much more important than the title book!)
You have to be a serious minded individual to do this. Which leads me to asking myself, why haven’t I done this yet? To get what you haven’t had, your must do what you haven’t done. I think this describes perfectly what this book entails.
To Success!
Dan is my hero…and you get some kudo’s too for publishing this great article too Chris! I am successful in this industry and yet I even still need constant reminders to keep learning, keep digging and keep working to stay on top and chase #1. Thanks for my reminder today.
Hey Chris! I like to read, Just don’t do enough of it! Good Book AS A MAN THINKTH, and of course THINK AND GROW RICH
That’s right, Chris! It’s evident – we, people, are lazy. We want faster, cheaper, without efforts. That is why there are not so many truly successful people )))
I absolutely agree with you. Ther’s a lot of things that we can do , but becouse of fear we dont do it.
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them” – Mark Twain
But I think the world has plenty of people with good knowledge, but very few who use that knowledge to make a difference in their lives.
David Rodriguez