“Zero?” I blurted out in disbelief. It couldn’t be. Yes, they shook their heads, wordlessly nodding. Then they collapsed back on the ground, back to their intoxicated guffawing. “Zero?” I asked once more, falling to the floor of the elegantly (and expensively) appointed information center next to them.

“Yes,” they said. “Zero, zero, zero. Not a one. Tourists were way too scared to walk around New York City all by themselves. We couldn’t give the damn tours away. We dropped the price to five dollars, then one, then free just to get the ad revenue, and still nobody would take them. This is the biggest boner of all time.” After several beers, taken from a case Alex and Eric had already almost finished, I was lying on the floor guffawing too. Zero—I couldn’t believe it, zero. I laughed and I cried. Boy, was I a jerk.

Though I had lost most of the money I’d ever made up to that point, I did learn—again—a valuable lesson. Test before you spend. Test before you commit. Test. Test. Test. Test. I could have saved $40,000 by just putting a folding table in front of the information center and seeing how many people would have rented tape tours for a few hours. I could have saved all the fix-up costs of the center. In fact, I even could have avoided the expense of producing the tours by just putting up a sign for tape tours. Every time somebody gave me $10, I could just take out a machine and say, “Oh, damn, the battery’s dead. Sorry. Here’s your money back.” Sure, for a couple of hours a few people might be mildly annoyed, but literally six months of wasted time and money on my part would have been saved.

This rule of testing holds true not just for tape tours, but for every business venture. Over the years it’s saved me literally millions in mail order, publishing, software, and telecommunications. In each of these businesses, I’ve many times found that things I was sure of weren’t such sure bets at all. When people think they’re right or they’re on a winning streak, they seem to have an almost religious need to “put their money where their mouth is,” to justify or affirm their faith in their idea. You see this every time somebody lets it all ride on the gambling tables in Vegas or when some quiet employee loses thirty years of savings in an instant on some risky investment or new business. Sure, there’s a temporary mental rush that goes with “taking the risk,” “letting it all ride,” “having the strength of your convictions,” but it’s B.S. There’s no reason to take a risk. There’s always a way to test first, a way to gather information, to scope out the competition, and generally hedge your bet. The most successful people who seem to be the biggest risk-takers actually never make any bets that aren’t hedged.

Do you honestly think any of history’s great generals, like Robert E. Lee, Alexander the Great, or Hannibal, ever went into battle and just “let it all ride” without sending out spies and doing thorough intelligence work to gauge the enemy’s capabilities first? Don’t bet on it!

Recently, Sun-tzu’s The Art of War has become popular reading (or at least popular to display on the bookshelves) among top corporate executives. These latter-day commanders, as they envision themselves, are brave, fearless risk-takers taking on a bunch of lily-livered corporate types. Or so they’d have you believe. That’s the message having the book up on the shelf is supposed to convey: “Watch your back around me. I’m a wild man.”