Uncovering What You Dont Know

The point

The most dangerous knowledge is what you know is true, but isn't. The need for an assessment from an expert: where is your pain? Where are your gaps? What is missing?

Jay Abraham · Redondo Beach 2023 — Day 1, Session 2 Cued to 1:27:47 1 min 59 sec loading…

Why it matters

You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that would dramatically increase your income, influence and success. The problem is that you cannot see them, and the reason is not a shortage of intelligence or effort. Tunnel vision narrows the view to a single track. Funnel vision is worse: it pours everything into one channel and treats the rest of the world as though it were not there. Every business runs on some version of it, and the first act of the strategy is admitting the funnel exists. The most dangerous knowledge is not what you do not know. There are things you do not know and things you know you do not know, and none of those will hurt you badly, because you will check them. The costly errors hide inside what you are most certain is true and is not. Every eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve leaves the retina, and the mind fills the gap so seamlessly that you never notice it. A business carries the same blind spot, which is why the honest assessment cannot come from inside the funnel. So look where nobody else is looking. There are four places the money hides. First, the hidden assets you do not see. Second, the overlooked profit opportunities you are not monetising. Third, the underperforming revenue activities that could be improved easily and safely. Fourth, the undervalued relationships you already hold. The fog was never empty. You had simply not looked into it.

The mistake almost everyone makes

Commissioning the assessment from inside the building. The people who built the funnel cannot see its walls, and an honest audit run by the team that produced the blind spot returns a list of things everybody already agreed about.

The test: Write the three things about your market you are most certain of. Then find somebody outside your industry and ask them to argue against each one.

Where it shows up — 8 worked examples

Who	What happened
The Entrepreneur Association	An archive of monthly analyses nobody counted as an asset was repackaged into manuals and collections, adding nine million a year.
A company with five hundred retail accounts	The fortune was already inside the building — in accounts it already held and had never asked a second question of.
The rare-coin publisher	Ran a newsletter and a brokerage in separate mental boxes. Over half the subscribers bought coins, and matching them made roughly twenty-five million.
Ted Turner	Bought MGM/UA for about $1.5 billion because he had seen what the others were valuing: the library, not the studio.
An entrepreneur new to town	Leased an idle county stadium's weekends and wrote in a provision a national operator later bought for a million dollars up front.
The lumber mill owner	Licensed his superior kiln-drying method to mills outside a protective radius, and the licensing income grew larger than the mill's own profit.
Booking.com	Its deepest driver was not conversion but the rate of validated learning, and almost nobody in travel was measuring that at all.
Hyundai	During the 2008 crisis let buyers return a car if they lost their income; sales rose about 8% while the industry fell 21%.

What it solves

The words a business owner uses for this before anybody has told them the name of it. If one of these is a sentence you have said out loud, this is your strategy.

We are certain and we might be wrong“There are a few things about this market everybody here treats as settled, and none of us has checked any of them in years.”The category of knowledge that actually costs money — what you are certain is true and is not — and a way to test it that does not flatter you.
Everything goes down one channel“Almost everything we do runs through one route to market and we barely acknowledge the others exist.”Funnel vision named, so the channel you pour everything into stops looking like the whole market.
Our review is us reviewing ourselves“The only people who ever assess this business are the people who built it.”One honest outside hour, because the people who built the blind spot are the last people who can find it.
We are looking where everyone else looks“We watch the same competitors, read the same reports and go to the same events as everyone in our sector.”The ground nobody is watching, which is where the breakthroughs are, rather than the ground your whole sector is fighting over.
We suspect there is money we cannot find“I have a strong feeling there is real money sitting in this business and no idea where to start looking for it.”Four named places it hides — unseen assets, unmonetised opportunities, underperforming activities, undervalued relationships.
The advisor's version“Clients hire me to confirm what they already believe, and the valuable part is the thing they have not asked about.”A method for finding what a client has not asked about, which is reliably worth more than confirming what they already believe.

The challenge

Get one honest outside look.

First, pull twelve months of your own figures and mark the three months that do not behave like the others. Then find somebody outside your industry with no stake in being agreeable, and give them an hour and five questions: where is the pain, where are the gaps, what is missing, what looks strong from outside that you suspect is weak, and what do those three odd months tell them. Write down every answer that makes you defensive; that reaction is the signal. Check the one you argued with hardest.

How you will know it is done Three odd months marked, an outside hour taken, the answer you argued with hardest checked, and which of the four places it landed named.

The AI layer · second pass

Once this is working, here is what to multiply

Improve the system first. Then multiply it. This panel is the second run at the strategy above, and it is deliberately useless until the first run is done.

Before you point anything at this You have taken one honest outside look and written down what made you defensive.

What it multiplies Sifting years of your own numbers, contracts and processes for the anomalies, correlations and quiet outliers nobody inside the business was ever going to notice by reading reports.

The trap Automating the audit from inside the building. It answers the question you asked, and the question you asked was shaped by the funnel, so what returns is agreement, the thing you are certain of, restated confidently enough to feel like confirmation rather than an echo.