Does your back yard look like mine?
Just the other day Roundtable member Joshua Boswell was here. He says to me, “Perry, you know what I like most about coming to your house?”
I have no idea what he’s going to say. Could be just about anything. Maybe something like “I love having access to the smartest Pay Per Click guys on the planet.”
He says, “I like the fact that your back yard looks like a hurricane ripped through it just yesterday afternoon.”
My back yard: the view from my 2nd story office window (click to enlarge)
We look out the window of my 2nd story office at the wreckage below.
Yes, Joshua, you’re right. My back yard does indeed look like a hurricane ripped through it. No corporate water fountains outside my office complex, not here in Planet Perry.
If you’re fighting in the trenches every day to keep your business afloat, you’re not alone.
And if the rest of your life is a tunnel of chaos and you’ve got stacks of papers all over the place and phones ringing and peanut butter on the keyboard and dogs barking and kids screaming while you’re trying to talk to customers on the telephone….
…welcome to the club!
I’m just like you. I have to shoo small children out of my office when the phone rings just like you do. Whenever someone starts playing the piano, our dog Gracie starts singing too. (She makes this dreadfully un-musical crooning sound that makes me cringe. RUN to slam the office door….)
My friend, you’re enjoying the corporate office complex of the 21st century: Your spare bedroom. Your converted dining room. Your basement nook across from the washer and dryer.
My new operations manager Drew Bischof lives in Texas and he’s got this teeny tiny office crammed under a stairwell with just enough room for a desk and a computer.
None of us need an office building with receptionists and ponds and crapping geese and water fountains and groves of trees. Instead we have trampolines and swing sets and crapping dogs and kids running through sprinklers and toddlers starting fires.
Seriously: A few weeks ago I caught
Zander my 4-year-old Pyro, and his Fire Pit
Zander, my four year old, dragging the fire pit into the back yard, loading it with firewood and trying to ignite it with a candle lighter.
At the time, in our 2 bedroom bungalow with a finished attic we have four kids, two cats, three fish, a parakeet, Laura’s 23 year old niece rooming with us, and two employees coming into the basement office every day (Mendy and Jeremy).
All under one cramped roof. Boxes and papers everywhere.
A week or two later Glenn Livingston says, “Ari said to me ‘Wow Glenn, you’d never believe it. Perry has a messy house with piles of boxes just like the rest of us’.”
Oh yeah. I’m just like everybody else. Chaos all around. Building a successful enterprise nonetheless.
Eventually, success does have its rewards. We moved to a bigger place, and now I have a spacious office and library all to myself. It’s where we hold the 2-Day 4-Man Intensives. Books and music and space to think and big windows with a nice view of the neighborhood, and, uh yeah, our back yard.
Everyone who comes has lunch at our dining room table and relaxes in our living room and watches the kids play outside.
While we eat, you might see Caden, my 8 year old, climbing up the doorway. Bryan snapped this picture the last time he was here:
Caden climbs the walls, between the kitchen and the dining room. We're kind of used to it around here.
If you qualify, you’re invited to join me for the next 2-day 4-man intensive at my home office. We will tidy the place up a bit before you come, but I promise that it’ll still feel like home.
And you’ll have tangible evidence that yes, real human beings really do build successful micro-empires from within our tunnels of eternal chaos.
You’re one of us, and it’s OK.
Next Intensive is April 29-30, at my place. Including the kids and the barking dog and the trampoline and the back yard that looks like a hurricane tore through.
(We might tidy that up just a bit before you come too. But you can still look out my office window and see seven kids jumping on the trampoline.)
Long live the chaos.
And long live real human beings with real dogs and cats and kids, who build real businesses in the midst of it.
Perry Marshall
Apply for Roundtable and the 4 Man Intensive here (next one is April 29-30) or get complete details about these events here.
About the Author
Entrepreneur Magazine says: "Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world's most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax."
He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.
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Perry this is classic. I recently shut down my office space and moved BACK into the house. Man did I miss it. The dog is snoring at my feet, it’s wonderful! The best part is my office is in the front room of my house, with no doors or walls, and as my house is neighborhood collection point, kids are ringing doorbells, walking in the house, the new dog (Mulligan) barks. It’s sheer heaven!
You couldn’t pay me to move back into an office. Granted, we don’t home school like you, but at 2:15, the tsunami starts at our house.
This week is spring break, so we have 13 year olds to 3 years olds in the house. It’s like peanut butter, chocolate and a smidge of jelly.
Great post, looking forward to hooking up on my next trip to Chitown.
Matt
I LOVE having my office in my house!!! I get SO much done before 8am and can turn everything off if I need to concentrate!!! Luckily I have a spare bedroom that is ALL MINE and tomorrow I will be getting a desk – a real live desk with drawers and everything – tra la!
Wait Perry, I was pretty sure you didn’t have kids. Whose kids are those REALLY? For that matter, WHOSE toys are those? C’mon, fess up.
LOL – love it. not only does my backyard look like that, so does my whole house!
and i agree with matt, wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hilarious Perry!
I have 2 boys (6 months and 2 years) so the fun is just starting.
Great photos!
Cheers,
Mike
Perry,
LOL… As they guy who pointed this little island of happy chaos, I just want to say again how very much I LOVE your very real world.
One of my biggest fears has always been that one day I’d be wildly successful, rich and famous and have to move into a stuff, boring, away-from-the-family, office space… that someone would walk into my office and tell me I was a fool and that I should hide behind some high-fluten corporate name and entity… that business would take over my life and crush all my values.
I’ve met far too many “gurus” that have reached this point. I’ve met way too many corporate chumps that think more of their fancy suits and snazy ties than they do of their third wife and their children.
Anyway, you crush all those fears.
Amen to making millions from a converted bedroom office in the midst of real life.
Thanks Perry for being real, being successful, and pushing the rest of us to our own version of personal greatness. Very nice of you my friend… very nice indeed.
– Joshua
PS… Oh, I know that there are some who are comfy-cozy in the middle of the corporate world, and more power to them. I have nothing against most of them and a lot of respect on top of that. But, for me, I say VIVA the insanely independent entrepreneur!
Dear Perry,
I loved this one. For a moment, I thought I was looking at my own backyard!
I don’t think I am ever going back to a corporate Dilbert cube. I LOVE my home biz and my 20 step commute every morning.
Cheers,
Depends on what business you’re in. I moved in the other direction, from home to an office, and it made all the difference to my clients, who didn’t want to buy from a guy who worked out of his home (silly perceptions, I know, but you give the client what they want and they’ll give you what you want (the sale)).
This is a very interesting post: a blatant sales letter which has a place for comments. I don’t think I’ve seen that done before.
This is CLASSIC Perry Marshall:
“None of us need an office building with receptionists and ponds and crapping geese and water fountains and groves of trees. Instead we have trampolines and swing sets and crapping dogs and kids running through sprinklers and toddlers starting fires.”
How timely, I am in this situation now – 5 kids (homeschooled) and a backyard that would rival Perry’s. I love it here and I do have a room I work in but for the past week have been considering getting an office elsewhere. I love working from home but I know that I am not as productive as I could be and would like room to have some staff come in (which I don’t here). I wouldn’t go far and we are in a small town so the space is cheap. I could still come home for lunch with the kids. Nice post though Perry and thanks for the inspiration.
I love reading your posts – just when I think I am the only one, you come along to remind me that I am not alone. I too work from home and have to shoo my little daughter out of the room when I have important phone calls. I used to work in corporate world, with the smart offices, fountains etc. and love so much to have my life how I have it now – with my 3 cats, wife and daughter around.
Kinda funny… as I read this, I’m working at my card table downstairs in the family room; my one-year-old is pounding on a drum; and my two oldest are playing Super Mario Kart behind me.
Yep, long live the chaos.
Ryan
Ah, brings back memories – my kids are too big now for all the yard toys.
Hey Perry
So often we dont do stuff because we have what I call ‘Messy Kitchen Syndrome’ Where we wait for everything to be in it’s place etc. Life ain’t like that though. And kids are the greatest teachers of this lesson!
Great post/ article. As usual you find the human ‘touch’. I can totally relate to the chaos your backyard so aptly depicts. It’s not chaos though – rather ‘life’. Life in all it’s messy glory
To life with kids, home offices and good mess
Mick
(Dad of 3 Boys)
Perry-
I had to laugh to see this – makes me feel better about typing on my bed when my (8) kids are on vacation and there is nowhere to hide. What I like most about it is that everyone in the family knows whats going on – where the successes, challenges, and delays are. It makes for a terrific education for the kids, as well as giving my wife and them a real feeling of involvement in what we/I are struggling to accomplish.
Thanks for the encouragement!
Ted
Hi Perry,
My backyard is much worse and from my home office on the second floor I look into this chaos just like you do. It always reminds me of one of my goals, while I’m diving into my on-line ventures: getting this fixed.
Really, you don’t want to see my backyard.
For me it makes it more bearable to see that I’m not alone with my chaos. Very much more bearable.
Thank you for this.
Mario
Perry:
My home office is Mr. Neat after seeing the pics of your old backyard.
Never found out how to down load the, “cheat sheet”, after I went thru the 5 day education.
Thanks,
ps: and its great today on the, “YBR”. If you have to ask what that is, you have’nt lived.
Simle and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.
When you wake up in the morning, YOU and You alone determine what kind of day YOU are going
to have.
After being a prisoner of comfort zone (heading web marketing departments for many big firms) for many years, I quit my job and started web marketing from home … A lot of work is done before the day even starts …
Now will be moving a bigger rented house that will have more of office space (one full room).
@Caden climbs the walls, between the kitchen and the dining room. We’re kind of used to it around here.
When I was Caden’ age, I did a lot of stuff like that.Easily!
But now,I don’t see myself doing stuff like that anymore. Age?
My point?
Caden is exploring his creative gneuis. He is not scared to make a mistake or fall down. He is curious, free,etc
I think this is what marketing is all about. There is nothing called mistake.
Do it,don’t follow the herd, look at it differently. If you fall, get up and try again.
This is how brilliant marketers discover breakthroughs in their businesses.
It is interesting that we don’t have the drive, energy, curiosity that kids have -in our marketing endeavors.
Yeah, I like your backyard too.
It make me feel that real people live there.
In my book, it is too neat and you have kids, I wrong with the picture”.
I would be asking myself, do these children play at all?
It makes them explore their creative genius. And that is the way I THINK our marketing should be.
Move things around -(with a method) and fix it later it need to.
Well that is just me, anyway.
You have 7 kids? That’s awesome!
My back yard has crapping geese, ducks, chickens and a horse… oh, ho I miss walking barefoot! But I DON’T miss living with an alarm clock and steam iron… left my last day job in 1980 and have thrived as a professional wire sculptor ever since.
Sometimes I coach other artists and small business people with a series of articles within my website, http://www.wirelady.com/berrienwireworkhompage.html [Thanks to Perry's coaching, I have top page ranking for wire sculpture, out of a field of 1.5 million listings]
Here’s an excerpt of what I tell artists about working at home:
MAINTAINING A PROFESSIONAL VENEER: You are a business professional as well as an artist, and you have a responsibility to make a professional impression every time someone calls or visits your studio. Rightly or wrongly, business folk will drop you several pegs if they hear Rock ‘n’ Roll, howling children and other dead giveaways that this is a family home, not the Hallowed Studio of an Undiscovered Master. They’ll question your professional habits and ability if you can’t keep your own kids from interrupting or drowning out your conversation entirely. So enlist the cooperation of ALL your housemates (and any guests) in this Conspiracy of Silence:
When the phone rings, the nearest person turns Volume all the way down on the TV and/or stereo; by the third ring, the artist’s voice is the only audible sound as she greets the caller, who can devote full attention to conducting business instead of trying to discern what sub-species of hyena is being vivisected in the next room. Even 4-year-olds easily learn “Three-Ring Circus”, if immediate praise is dished out for successful muting (or a fifteen-minute confinement to quarters for Deliberate Violations). Upon hearing that even preschoolers can do it, older kids usually loftily comply as a point of pride.
OMGoodness!! My boy climbs the doorways too… (he is 13yrs old Perry..so it will continue for a few more years..)
And the backyard…
…..yours looks positively POSH compared to mine!!
We homeschool too!!
Amazing !
We even have the same trampoline for the kids.
I wouldn’t have it any other way than working from home, I do have the luxury of my own office but it’s great being able to be there when the kids go to school and come home.
Good on you.
Phill
Really liked this one very much-totally contrary to all the wow, watch me here with my sportscar in front of the mansion stereotype bullshit…ha, ha yes like a hurricane..
Jorke , netherlands
This is great – I already passed your link onto a bunch of people.
My boys are just like yours (although I only have the two). I recently caught my 4-yr-old with matches trying to light a candle in the bathroom, and my almost-8-yr-old climbs the walls just like that!
The climbing door picture is a classic. Doesn’t everybody do that?
You can only get away with extraordinary mess if you are extraordinarily sharp!
Perry,
That is classic! I feel alot better about my office that is a total train wreck now. I mean sometimes I can’t even find a notepad to use because all of my papers are just everywhere. I can always get to the keyboard though
Well Perry,
I am not so fortunate to have a backyard. In fact I will be happy if I have one even if its a big mess.
From sunny island of Singapore where we live in apartments.
I love this, Perry. It’s so real and therefore, so funny. So much better than the sanitized cubicle dungeons of the corporate world.
Hi!Perry
Hi! Perry
Your backyard is just like my grandchildrens’
gardens. As for mine, very ordered – not a toy or blade of grass to be seen – all replaced with granite.Even my flowers and shrubs are in a Vertical arrangement. Although sometimes I regret them not being around all the time, I don’t miss the chaos of 5 children and twenty grandchildren – I can give so much more to my retirement business, and it pays. I’m now compensating for the distractions of the past. Would I do the same again, Sure!
Great post…because now i feel much better about the state of affair in my house
and i have a new excuse
not only do i not have time because i’m building a business
all the successfull folks are the same (or at lease Perry and gang)
so it must be the right way to go
thanks
Tally
Perry,
I read your page and most of the comments. This all reminds me of when I started out. I have been mostly self employed all my life. I started at 12 years old mowing grass and taking care of to little brothers out of necessity living in a single parent home with 6 of us kids and mom. I was the third oldest one. Nearly died in an auto accident in 1980. Fast forward to the late 1980′s married and I quit my job and started in the back bedroom of a three bed room house (875 sq. ft.) very small. Grew the business to taking over the living room (75% of the house). Oh! did I mention by this time I was married with two kids. It has been great working form home. The kids played at my feet and ran under the tables. I could mow the grass when I wanted to, work when I wanted to. I could stop and eat dinner with the family. Now fast forward again to now April 16, 2009. I am in an office building away from my home (6 months now and I hate it). Because the economy has crushed the engineering business I run I no longer need this office. I AM SO EXCITED… I get to move back home. Yes money is short but family is rich. I am now working on learning Internet marketing. I have co-authored a book that will be on Amazon soon “WhatNotToDoInNetworkMarketing”. Even though I am very smart and very self motivated I am struggling with it. This time reminds me of where I was back in the late 1980′s broke and started my engineering business. No hill for a climber. I just want to mention my very lovely wife and life long supporter my Leslie. I like to teas here and call her my sugar momma (when my income drops). Now that I have written this my life to this point seams so short?
Thanks you for this page and the invitation to write.
Tim & Leslie Kaelin
Louisville, KY.
Perry, nice to see some insight into a real home!!
I’m enjoying working at home in my “command bunker” (I have a load of Macs and screens there), but it is small and the physical size does seem to stifle how I feel sometimes.
I’m longing for a garden office, energy efficient, built of reclaimed wood, with some nice lights, hardwood floor and the space I crave!
Best wishes from England,
Jon
I’ve been reading your emails for a couple of years now, not all of them mind you but enough to keep me reading your words of wisdom when I get a chance and this one came with pictures! Pictures of chaos that all of us with young kids can relate to, got a real kick out of this one Perry. Thanks for sharing an insight into your more personal side! We now know you are one of us!
And of course there is the water hose all strung out not neatly rolled on a hanger, just like mine. I’m understanding this late night, lots of work and someday, the greater rewards.
Okay – you caught me. I just got upset with my 2 1/2 year old daughter for getting in the dogs pen and mixing the water and dog food into a big smelly mess – while I’m trying to get some work done! But I wouldn’t miss her little face and her warm arms and soft kisses for anything! I’m so lucky to be able to build a business AND see her grow. Thanks Perry!!
That is so funny! The picture of Caden climbing the walls brings back memories…I did the exact same thing when I was a kid. I felt so cool because no one else could do it. Anyway, I don’t feel so bad now…I have two small dogs on my lap as I’m typing this. They usually decide to start barking when I get a phone call. Nice to know I’m not in this by myself.
Awesome post! So you are human.
Bruce
Wow! I still remember when you posted the picture of Zander just after he was born – it’s amazing to see how big he is now (and how much he looks like his dad)!
I guess this thread is to warn the Roundtable members what they are going to see at Perry’s house, but I’ve got to say that I owe Perry for bringing tidiness to my life – despite the pictures!
About a year ago he mentioned something called an iRobot Roomba – I bought one on eBay and sure enough it has actually made my house better and saved me about an hour a week (and my office when I had one) – so well done – another testimonial for Perry saving irreplacable time!
;o)
PS: It only vacuums but if you tell the kids “it will eat your socks” then they rush in to tidy up ahead of it!
Hi All,
I’m a bit of a neatfreak by nature, but thankfully, working from home and the “mental freedom” of the internet marketing lifestyle has almost cured me of that. That freedom is also opening up other aspects of my life.
I never fell for the office thing, tested it and saw it for what it was (summer internship at an investment bank doing M&A kinda’ stuff). So I never walked too far down that path. But the guys I know from there are going back to school now because they’re losing their jobs. I know because I just went to a bachelor party this weekend and saw a lot of that – 28, overweight, and overindulgent.
Alot of them have music playing in the background when I call these days because they’re students by default now. So try not to let too much guilt build up over enjoying your work as well as your life. I’m not sure why we have that guilt?
At the very least, respect the fact that you decide whether or not you’ll have a job next week at all. It’s good to know that other people are having these kinds of thoughts.
Cheers,
Aron
Wow! I never thought I’d see a backyard that looked worse than mine. I would post a picture but my wife would kill me. As for the boxes of papers, I already got the space beetween the furnace and the wine cellar filled up. I need a man size vault, I think Dick Cheney has one available…
gesse what mine can look worse but i bet my drive way is worse it is filled with cars
Looks like mess, but sweet.