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

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” said Sherlock Holmes.

You are presumably reading this because you are intrigued – for self-interest, not just academic exercise – with the mysteries of achievement and success. I have spent more than 30 years examining these mysteries. Before me, a long list of authors, lecturers, consultants, psychologists, researchers. Napoleon Hill one of the most famous, whom you’ve probably read. Many before him, after him.  All sorts of theories; 7 steps; 17 steps; blueprints; and explanations have been produced, all aimed at solving the mystery of why so few do so very well, while the majority achieve comparatively little.

This is true of any general population, or any given industry’s or profession’s population, or any company’s sales organization, even any school or town. Pretty much without exception, only about 4% do well, 1% super-well, 15% okay, the remaining 80% divide between struggling and spending entire lives running in place or never even getting out of the starting gate at all.

Why do few rise and most, at best, flounder? I’m afraid it’s not as much of a mystery as everybody in the 80% group wants it to be.

The specific reasons people fail are many and varied, and range from tragic to comical. But there is only one underlying reason: the choices they make.

About study, about association, about initiative, effort, persistence. There is no shortage of opportunity. There is some worthy opportunity accessible to everyone, regardless of their education or location or other factors. Every “reason” for failure can be de-bunked.

Oh, the poor fellow had no good examples to follow or mentors to inspire him. Neither did Og Mandino, an alcoholic hanging out at the public library because it was a dry, warm, safe place. There he discovered mentors in books available free, with their help confronted his demons and pulled himself together. Became a success in business and became one of the all-time bestselling self-help authors.

Space here does not permit similarly de-bunking all the other “reasons”, but I can. Every one.

The argument then disintegrates to insisting my examples are all of exceptional people and cannot be applied to large numbers. But why not? The fact is: the people whose stories I cite in de-bunking the majority’s reasons for not doing well are very ordinary people who chose to be exceptions, to do exceptional things, to make themselves exceptional. Chose.

In my world, people bump up against significant-sized groups of people who are all doing well in their businesses or professions. The top industry advisors I work with, including the one who has published this article for you to read, have hundreds; some have thousands of top performers around them.

When someone new comes into such a rarified place, he sometimes runs back out the door as fast as he can- to avoid confronting the obvious fact that there is no real reason for not doing exceptionally well.  If you feel that way, I’m sure the exit is clearly marked.

A small number stay and dig in and determine that they will get all there is to get about how to succeed and prosper, and use it. In this way, the percentages never change no matter what I or the person who published this article or a legion of us say, write or do. Because, ultimately, success or failure is an individual, personal choice no one can make for you. We wind up helping winners win.

– 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

There is an old joke about the Farm Bureau agent trying to convince the grizzled farmer to attend the upcoming educational conference being put on by the Bureau. The resistant farmer says: “Aw, no need. I ain’t usin’ half of what I already know.”

That, of course, is not the point.

The academic cliché is: knowledge is power. This is a falsehood concocted by the earliest organizers of universities and promoters of higher education, and it may at least partly explain why there are so many frustrated, broke scholars and teachers, and why universities need donations i.e. hand-outs from people who do figure out what produces wealth and power.

The vast majority of business owners have more than enough knowledge about their core business and the core skills it requires, for its deliverable, be that fixing meals or fixing cars or fixing teeth. If they lack, it is know-how to package, present and promote that in a commercially viable, competitively successful manner, or to manage customers, or staff, or money. But even equipped with ample supply of all that knowledge, many starve.

Because. It’s not what you know; it’s what you do.

Reading, listening, exposing yourself to different and repetitive, reinforcing ‘takes’ on the same information and ideas, association with high-performers and expert coaches and advisors all helps, not so much by stuffing more and more and more knowledge into the putty between your ears, but in motivating you to take it out and put it to good use.

Motivation by association vs. the costs of isolation, under-rated by most.

While it is true that all successful people are ultimately self-motivated; meaning they decide and do, rather than being told and made to do; it is also true that they create environments for themselves that facilitate self-motivation. I like to ask myself what I know today that I didn’t know yesterday, not so much because I need more knowledge – I’m like that farmer, I’m not using what I already know – but because that new information may motivate action on my part that liberates value stored in my entire knowledge base.

People fail to advance for two reasons: static thinking and inaction.  Conversely, financial growth tends to follow or at least occur in concert with personal growth.  If you are not engaged in a deliberate program of personal growth, your efforts to grow your business or bank account are undermined. It’s not just what you do in terms of things, and getting things done, but what you do about getting better and being more effective at the things you do. Building a better you. Not just better advertising, marketing, products and businesses.

– 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