I was reading about Joseph Asscher, a master diamond cutter from Amsterdam.
In 1908, he was entrusted with the Cullinan Diamond, the largest rough diamond ever discovered. It weighed more than 3,100 carats and was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
What caught my attention wasn’t the diamond itself.
It was Asscher’s role in the story.
There are two ways to make money in the diamond business.
You can spend your life looking for diamonds.
Or you can become the person who knows what to do with them once they’re found.
Most people focus on the mining.
They spend their time searching for the next customer, the next opportunity, the next product, or the next idea that will hopefully move the business forward.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Every business needs new opportunities.
But the longer I’ve been in business, the more I’ve come to appreciate the value of becoming a diamond cutter.
A rough diamond may have tremendous potential, but potential alone doesn’t create value. Someone has to recognize what it can become and have the patience and skill to bring it out.
I think the same thing happens in business.
Some owners spend their entire careers chasing the next opportunity. Others spend their careers getting more value out of the opportunities they already have.
They see possibilities where other people see something ordinary.
They recognize potential before it becomes obvious.
And they understand that lasting growth often comes from refinement, not discovery.
When I first started my business, I assumed growth came from finding the next thing. The next customer. The next strategy. The next breakthrough.
Over time, I’ve realized that my biggest gains came from improving something that was already there.
Sometimes it was a process that needed to be tightened up. Sometimes it was a customer relationship that deserved more attention. Sometimes it was an employee who needed coaching, direction, and time to develop.
None of those things felt particularly exciting in the moment.
They certainly didn’t create the same feeling as discovering a brand-new opportunity.
But years later, those improvements ended up creating far more value than many of the ideas I chased looking for the next big thing.
The businesses I admire most seem to understand this.
They’re always open to new opportunities, but they don’t build their future around finding them. Instead, they focus on getting more value from the people, customers, products, and opportunities already in front of them.
From the outside, it can look like they found a better diamond.
In reality, they simply became better cutters.
And I think that’s one of the most overlooked lessons in business.
Anyone can spend their life searching for the next opportunity.
The harder skill is learning how to recognize potential, develop it, and patiently turn it into something more valuable than it was when you found it. That’s the long game.
Keep playing the long game!
When you start a business, nobody hands you a manual. That’s why I write The Long Game.
Each week, I share stories, insights, and observations from the lessons I’ve learned—and the ones I’m still learning—about building a business, hiring the right people and creating a culture people want to be part of.
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