Got Acres Of Diamonds?

Over on TeamCircle I have been glad to see the members who've joined me from Merchant Circle, making the site their own. I am frankly blown away at the vast array of interests and businesses people choose to get involved with. Here's to a long and happy association.

And here's the blog that I wrote for them, since it is a closed group, and really, this message applies to EveryMan. Even the female ones. ;-)

Life on the internet is a little like a microcosm of life outside of the internet. Like watching a culture grow in a petri dish... a few cells here in the right medium, a little warmth and hey presto! a whole mess of activity and new cells growing apace.

The favorite occupation online seems to be rushing after The Next Big Thing. Websites...SEO... Identity verification... Got to have self hosted blogs, and on and on and on... And the reason? What is it? Find new people to show off our wares to. More, new, collect names, names, names... The frenzy for numbers. More numbers, must be better, right?

This often strikes me as a rush to be busy, but not necessarily always effective. In the 'olden days', it was marketing to get new clients. For some reason "new" seems better than "old" when it comes to clients, for some reason. And yet what is an old client, if not someone who has already shown that they like what you do enough to pay you! You already know that. You have clear evidence of the fact that they will part with their money for what you do. With a new prospect? Who knows. Maybe they will, and maybe they won't.

And yet the focus seems to be much more on looking for the New Thing, the New Customer. While never fully learning how to get the most leverage out of the Old Thing, or serving better the Old Customer.

Here's a link to an old story that I think is appropriate to this topic.
Read the story and let me know what you make of it.

What are the acres of diamonds that you are overlooking, in the search for the New and Untested?


Acres Of Diamonds: Read Here

Acres Of Diamonds By Russell H. Conwell

I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again. Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the fifty-seven years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once -- never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it -- thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan, is an entire failure.

The "Acres of Diamonds" which I have mentioned through so many years are to be found in this city, and you are to find them. Many have found them. And what man has done, man can do. I could not find anything better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and over again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library... continues Acres Of Diamonds: Read Here