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

Here’s a special guest article from marketing legend, Dan Kennedy….

I happen to be a politics junkie and, therefore, a news junkie. I even write political columns, so I have to pay attention daily. But I learned years ago that it is the news media’s job to make every problem a crisis, every item of earth-shaking, life-altering importance. Few news events actually are. As a matter of fact, most things wind up being about as important as you permit them to be.

Few people think of themselves as news-makers.

All the world’s a stage, and on it there are players, but there are countless more spectators. It never dawns on people how much of their time is spent as a spectator, how little spent actually playing a game over which they exercise control.

Millions watch football on any given Sunday. Only a small cadre of coaches scheme to win their games on Sunday, a small number of players work hard all week to be mentally and physically prepared to win the games in which they compete.

It’s significant that the spectators rarely make news – the winning players and coaches do. And the spectators never get million dollar contracts to watch. They must pay for that privilege.

There is that old cliché, about three kinds of people: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; those who wonder what the heck happened, why, and why they were left out!

There’s a lot of truth to the cliché. Most people act as if they are in a little boat set adrift in a vast ocean of circumstances beyond their control, rowing fast and frantically, looking about endlessly for someone to come to their rescue. Few are captains.

It’s my observation that exceptionally successful people are very deliberative and purposeful about three things, in this regard.

First, they act as captains. Every day – yes, every day – they set out on a charted course of their choosing; they never meander about aimlessly.

Two, they are “makers”, creators, doers. They make things happen, make things move forward, get things done, sometimes through sheer force of will and refusal to accept or excuse less. In doing so, they are even, from time to time, news-makers, to their clientele, in their industry, in their community.

Third, they seek association with people of this ilk, and abbreviate as best they can the time spent with or on people not so self-determining, self-motivating. They recognize just how powerful association is.

My friend, the late Jim Rohn said that given the bank balances of the five people you hang out with the most, he could “guess” your bank balance with great accuracy.

He also noted that rich people have big libraries, poor people prefer big TV’s – a way of asking you what sort of ideas you associate with most. A lot of people with 52″ plasma’s and TV’s in three or four rooms of the house say they have no time to read.

Most accomplishment or lack thereof is result of investment – not accident. Those who are endlessly, constantly disappointed with their incomes, businesses, lives, prefer believing in accident, luck, randomness as a comforting religion, but that’s delusional.

Examination of most success reveals controllable causes, notably that person’s investments of his time, energy, money, in association with productive and provocative ideas, and people who are in the game, not in the bleachers.

— 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