Rediscovering Acres of Diamonds

The year was 1993 and I had just resigned from my leadership role with a Chicago area hospital after losing my mom to cancer. A few weeks later a friend called to check in on me. He then asked the following question: 

“Any chance I could talk you into doing a presentation for our Kiwanis club?” 

I asked a few questions before obliging, marking the date in my then Franklin Covey Planner. A few weeks later I arrived at the venue where about thirty attendees were seated for lunch waiting for the meeting to begin. After the Pledge of Allegiance and a pathetically sung rendition of the Kiwanis Club song, we sat to eat. 

About 20-minutes later, I was introduced as the speaker. 

This presentation was the launch of my speaking career, a gig that led to 85-90 presentations a year and engagements both nationally and internationally. To market my business (which at the time was named Empowerment Unlimited, Inc.) I decided to employ a strategy focusing exclusively on Chicago area meetings and conventions. 

Now looking back, I estimate that roughly 80% of my new speaking opportunities were the result of a mere 20% of the local speaking engagements I gave. This became my first awareness of the 80/20 Principle and the power of influencer referrals in building a business. 

Even more remarkable, I surmise that the vast majority of my new engagements and revenue over the course of 7 ½ years on the speaking circuit were the result of two major Chicago area speaking engagements: The International Association of Administrative Professionals and the Employee Services Management Association. Included in the trickle-down were the likes of Rolls-Royce, Texas Instruments, Exxon Mobil, Frito Lay, IBM, and FedEx, among countless others. 

In short, My motto was to “speak anytime, anywhere locally, for free, even for a fee” to create a massive local area network effect.

Are There Diamond Riches Right In Your Own Backyard?

The book Acres of Diamonds by Russell Cornwell is a true story of an African farmer who overheard stories about other farmers making millions through the discovery of diamond mines. Hearing this, the farmer became so excited that he couldn’t wait to sell his own farm in order to free himself up to go prospecting for diamonds himself. 

So he eventually sold it, spending the remainder of his life wandering the African continent in search of diamond gems to sell on the world markets. Despite his enthusiasm for new riches, he became despondent, threw himself in a river, and drowned. 

Meanwhile, the man that purchased his farm came across a stream on his property one afternoon. It was there that the radiant light coming from the bottom of the stream caught his eye. So he reached into the water and picked up what he discovered was a stone, a fairly large glimmering one at that. He then proceeded to take the gem home, placing it on his fireplace as a reminder of his prized discovery. 

After a few weeks had passed, he came by for a visit. The radiant stone caught the friend's eye. So he reached for it and held it in his hand for a closer look, remarking to his farmer friend, “Do you have any idea what this is?”

The farmer replied, “No, I found it awhile back and thought it was just a pretty piece of crystal.”

His friend paused and said, “You’ve just found one of the largest diamonds ever discovered.” The farmer stood there in stunned amazement telling his friend that the creek on his property was full of similar stones.  

So as the story goes, the farm that the first farmer sold so that he might set out to distant lands in search of a diamond mine, turned out to be one of the most prosperous mines on the entire planet. In other words, this farm he had sold for a pittance, in order to look for diamonds elsewhere had yielded a massive haul right in his backyard.

The story inspired Conwell so much that he began sharing and inspiring others with it. This led to speeches to major audiences, the income of which he used to found Temple University. By the time of his 1925 passing, he had given the “Acres of Diamonds” speech over 6,000 times. The book of course went on to become a perennial bestseller. 

Back to my own journey, many of my friends and colleagues on the speaking circuit employed a different strategy than I did by jet setting to faraway places, often at their own expense, to identify speaking opportunities. I, on the other hand, took a “hyper-local” approach realizing that Chicago was a perpetual land of milk and honey when it came to local speaking engagements with national and international reach. 

Today, as many of you know, I am now both feet in with “Great Books, Great Minds,” after a year and a half as the part-time Senior Editor at Gokhshtein Media. As was the case when building my speaking practice in Chicago, I am using the “Acres of Diamond” method once again, this time in Denver’s high-opportunity local corridors. Having lived off and on in the area for years, I am now tilling the soil, deploying a similar strategy in the business and residential district Cherry Creek North to boost “Great Books, Great Minds,” the member-supported digital newsletter for book lovers that you are now reading. 

The book Acres of Diamonds has had a profound impact on millions of people in helping them discover that they may be standing in a trove of opportunity and riches, right in their own backyard. All it takes is a willingness to patiently cultivate the nearby soil in order to reap an abundant return. 

If the first farmer had only taken the time to thoroughly explore his own property and the embarrassment of riches that existed there, and patiently harvested them, all of his wildest dreams would have come to fruition.