In Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich, he tells a true story of a man named R. U. Darby and his uncle who were hit by the “gold fever” during the gold rush.
After having their first car of ore shipped to a smelter, they discovered they had hit one of the richest bodies of gold in Colorado. Excitedly, they continued digging, but the ore vein disappeared.
They kept digging in the hopes of finding the vein again, but when they didn’t get the results they were hoping for, they packed it in and sold off their machinery.
The man who bought the machinery realized random digging was not the best way to find the vein. He called in a mining engineer and had him make some calculations.
What contributed to the failure of Darby and his uncle was their lack of knowledge about “fault lines” and their neglect to consider alternatives. With his expert knowledge, the engineer was able to predict that the vein of gold could be found three feet from where the Darby’s quit digging, and that’s exactly where it was.
Millions of dollars worth of gold were pulled from the mine by the man who decided to...