Russell H. Conwell’s book Acres of Diamonds is a classic that will stick with you long after you’ve read it. It includes several anecdotes that link to an overall moral, which will influence how you look for opportunities in your life from now on.
In the book, Conwell shares several different, but very similar anecdotes. You learn about a rich man that felt poor after learning about diamonds. This man sells his farm so that he can go look for diamonds, only to fail miserably as he uses up all of his money. In the end, he throws himself into the ocean because he felt so much like a poor failure. But then, you learn the person that purchased the farm from him discovers that it is on top of a very valuable diamond mine. In another story, you learn about another man who sells his land so that he can go pursue the oil industry in another country, only to later discover that his old land was soaked in oil. And so on and so on, the stories continue in the same way throughout the book. As you read them, a moral begins to surface – Although it is commonly believed that you need to go off into the world and chase a fantastic dream to earn a fortune and become great, oftentimes that is not the case. If you pay attention in your life, you will begin to realize that everything you need to build a fortune for yourself is right under your nose.
Between these stories, Conwell also discusses the specific kinds of ways you could figure out how to make a fortune for yourself right where you are. He discusses a demand-based business model and highlights, through more anecdotes, the brilliance of designing a product or service based on what you already know people need. Through these insights, he reveals that the idea that you need to go somewhere else and do something else in order to make a fortune is what keeps people from building their fortune.
After reading this book, you will find yourself thinking about all of the ways in which you could be making a fortune right where you are at. You might also start realizing just how many opportunities you have let pass you by because you believed you could only make a fortune and do great things somewhere off in the undisclosed distance. Either way, you will leave the book feeling motivated to search for the diamond farm in your own backyard.