Dear Online Marketing Professional:

I’d like to tell you all about Roundtable, but before I do let’s have Neil Waterhouse tell you. He traveled halfway ’round the world from Australia, three times a year, to attend the Roundtable meetings. Neil was not prompted by me to write this; he voluntarily sent this to his email list of several hundred thousand people:

“Why do I pay US $10,000 per year just to be personally mentored by Perry Marshall?

Why, simply for this reason.

We all want a passive income don’t we?

What I mean by passive income is a business that makes money without us doing anything, that’s right, no phone calls, no mailing, NO TALKING TO PEOPLE, no inviting a mate around to spring a marketing plan on them, just a simple fully automated home business that puts huge amounts of money in your bank every day, 365 days per year.

For any business in the world we have to generate sales some how. It does not matter what strategy we use, we still need to generate sales.

Google has literally blown every other kind of marketing medium to the weeds in terms of generating sales for businesses. Just think about how simple life is now.

Right now you can write a small 4 line ad and 5 minutes later you can have customers from all over the world putting money into your bank account.

Never before have we been able to have this incredible power in our living room while we are still wearing our pajamas!

Google is now the biggest search engine after blowing its last competitor Yahoo’ out of the water. The reason for Google’s huge popularity and growth is simply because it gives us much more relevant results from our searches.

Yahoo could of stayed number 1 but they refused to listen to their clients and to ignore what Google was doing.

So why do I pay Perry Marshall $10,000 per year? Simply because Perry Marshall is the worlds number one Google Expert and I am honored to be 1 of 14 members of his Roundtable.

Roundtable is top level and purely by invitation only. Invitation is rarely offered as there are a limited number of positions that Perry makes available. All members must be entrepreneurial, highly experienced and successful at making money.

I feel very honored to be part of this group, which meets regularly with Perry for 2-3 solid days of brainstorming and idea swapping at a time. Working so close to the world’s number one Google expert allows me to get the very latest information ahead of the rest of the world at large.

Google is an incredible tool to make money by. Whenever you see any Google updates from me please make sure you pay close attention to them. The information I collect is the absolute very latest and very often unique as there are only a limited number of us who have access to it, anywhere in the world.

To give you some idea of the power of this information, just one very tiny change last week, which took less than 30 seconds doubled the sales of one product instantly.

This is far from a unique occurrence; many times I see simple changes increase sales by up to 400%! The difference between failure and success is very often the quality of information.

The way I learned to be an Internet guru was I purchased every leading course on the market and attended every seminar I could find. This is how I gleaned who were the best of the best in their field and I sought them out as my mentors. The most knowledgeable and elite mentors are pricey though well worth it.

Don’t ever confuse a mentor, with a coach. A mentor is someone who has done it successfully before you. They are there to pass on their invaluable knowledge and show you the map on how to get there. Whereas a coach is someone who holds you responsible and kicks your butt out of bed every morning, and tells you to turn the TV off! A coach holds you accountable for your actions or inactions.

A good coach is very inexpensive in comparison, who could perhaps pick up an effective on out of your local army unit, a drill sergeant perhaps!

My success has been no accident. I have several incredible mentors including Perry Marshall, who are the absolute best in their field. Being mentored and receiving quality information by experts is the true shortcut to success.”

To your success,

Neil Waterhouse, The Waterhouse Report, Warriewood, NSW, Australia

Very, Very Few People Have Ever
Belonged To A True Mastermind Group

Where everyone sitting at the table is sharp, successful, and genuinely interested in the success of the others. When the right chemistry happens, it’s an experience without parallel. That’s exactly what my top performers in Roundtable are experiencing.

Roundtable is a live mastermind group that gathers for an intensive 2-3 day private meeting, 3 times a year. In this group, avid entrepreneurs privately discuss their challenges, take situations apart and put them back together, solve tough problems in real time, share the results of their latest innovations and experiments. We support, encourage and challenge each other, swapping strategies, techniques, vendors, technologies and resources.

Roundtable has met for four years now, and the chemistry is electric. I am writing you this letter because this may be something that can benefit you.

The purpose: To increase your income, work fewer hours and have greater peace of mind, and put your feet on economic solid ground, especially with the fast-changing nature of the Internet and the uncertainty of this time.

Have You Ever Had a Real Mastermind-Experience?

I’m sure every entrepreneur on the planet has heard of Napoleon Hill’s Mastermind concept
-great minds join together to craft their plans and hone their skills. Iron sharpens iron. Million dollar ideas are swept off the table to make room for billion dollar ideas, and all that.

But have you ever actually been in a really good mastermind? One where everyone is razor sharp, and committed to contributing to one another?

Very, very few people have.

But I’m here to tell you, it rocks. When everyone’s on the same wavelength – when group members show up from points far and wide, with one purpose in mind – to contribute to the synergy of group experience, to challenge, motivate, and inform; to listen, understand and respond – it’s a genuinely amazing experience.

It’s some of the best time you spend all year. You come home refreshed, activated, energized. (I speak from personal experience, not only because of the Mastermind groups I host, but the ones I participate in. I sharpen my axe too – and spend more than $40,000 each year doing so.)

When you come home from seminars, you have a list of 119 fantastic ideas and probably only get 3 or 4 implemented.

Right?

But when you come home from a mastermind, it’s totally different. Rather than a firehose of “cool ideas” you may come home with a list of 11 or 12 things you’re going to stop doing – and you free up more time for yourself, so you can do the five or six higher leverage actions you identified in the Mastermind meeting.

How liberating that is.

Marketing-Techniques Are Just
One Piece Of The Puzzle

In all spheres of life, world-class performers always have coaches. Even Michael Jordan needs a coach. In business, too, every top-ranking performer has a coach and a mentor.

And now, you’re being invited to apply to become one of a very few web-marketers from literally around the world who will be part of my elite mastermind program.

I understand the value of good coaching. I’ve been under the tutelage of John Carlton (who’s sharpened my writing skills tremendously, and saved my butt from multiple bad decisions), John Paul Mendocha (I now employ a number of important sales and negotiation strategies he taught me) and Dan Kennedy (who consistently brings more hard-core business insights than anyone else I know); I’m part of Dan Sullivan’s top coaching group in Strategic Coach, where iron sharpens iron every few months. About two dozen other razor sharp business people gather and hone our skills behind closed doors.

In addition to the coaching groups I belong to… I also spend a great deal of time and resources on personal development. Over the last four years, I have easily spent more than $100,000 on consulting, books, tapes, coaching, and so on. (My Amazon bill alone is around $300 each month.) The more I spend on personal development and coaching, the more successful I become.

Imagine that…

Well it’s one thing to get personal, customized advice from one expert. It’s even more powerful to have a mastermind alliance where a handful of people gather together, form vital friendships and calibrate their skills and plans several times throughout the year.

And that’s exactly what I am inviting you to apply for my coaching program and mastermind alliance for advanced marketers.

We’re In 2012 Now.

In The Rest Of This Decade And Beyond, Will You Suffer, Or Prosper?

For a long time we had been living in, for the most part, a fantastic economy. Money was flowing faster than ever before in history. People who haven’t got the foggiest clue about anything were becoming millionaires (geez!) just because they bought a house in the right neighborhood five or ten years ago. But all you need to do is look at the Real Estate market right now to know there was never any guarantee of the status quo.

Today, knowing what I know, knowing what you know, there’s still no reason whatsoever for you or I to go hungry, or ever experience those kind of difficult circumstances. The tools and know-how are available to all of us, such that we can prosper regardless of the outside conditions.

Things can change. I’m an optimistic guy and I don’t worry too much that the sky might be falling. But you and I should always be asking the question: What if things do change? What if the economy takes a nose dive? What if money gets tighter? What if competition in your market doubles in the next year?

If the next 10-15 years brings a crushing baby-boomer burden to the Social Security system and the health care system, where will you be? What if politicians, driven by greed and desperation, slap us with tons of new taxes?

(It would be naive to think they wouldn’t, or won’t.)

Will you have sufficient funds to ignore the chaos, dismemberment and despair that’s going on outside? More importantly, do you right now have a reserve of intelligence, strategy, eyes and ears and brainpower that will power you through the low spots?

Do You Know What This Symbol Is?

This is the Chinese symbol for crisis.

The character on the left means danger.

The character on the right means opportunity.

Understand this: Regardless of what next month, next year or next decade may bring – regardless of what Google cooks up, or what kind of stupid SPAM legislation comes down the pipe (it will), or the economy – it’s all got huge upside potential IF you know what to do when it happens. IF you’re well advised. IF you’re agile, IF your success is built on sound principles and not merely flash-in-the-pan techniques.

In the Great Depression,
The Money Didn’t Just “Vanish”

When the great depression hit – which, as you’ll remember, had been preceded by an exuberant season of prosperity – all the money that ‘disappeared’ didn’t really disappear. It had to go somewhere, did it not?

It most certainly did.

During the Great Depression, Lawrence Gelb wrangled a free write up on the Chicago American, which sold out his first batch of product. Then he wrangled credit from a bottle manufacturer. Gave credit to wholesalers so they could put product in beauty stores on credit… Sold the resulting company, Clairol (ever heard of them?) for $22.5 million in 1959. That’s over $100 million in today’s dollars.

Chock Full ‘O Nuts founder sold candy on street corner, switched to coffee when a nearby drug store complained, and grew to become major coffee brand. Good Humor was founded as an attempt to expand ice cream sales by delivering the product to neighborhoods

In the Great Depression, most people fell behind, but others prospered enormously.

It always works that way, you know. Vast fields of opportunity lie before you, and in the absence of any impending doom, the immediate challenge is to put as much money in your bank account as you possibly can, as fast as you can.

In all my products I’ve equipped you to the best of my ability with the basic technical skills to succeed online. Now don’t worry if you haven’t integrated every step of that system; merely reviewing the CD’s and recordings of our calls once more, and consulting conversations, will begin to allow you to make profound changes in the way you bring in new business.

Part Of The Magic Of This Group…

Part of the magic of this group is that we not only do marketing and cook up brilliant strategies, but we work on our heads, too – our expectations, our hidden fears, our ability to set goals and have high expectations of achieving them.

We talk about a LOT more marketing ideas than just Google (which is little more than an afterthought in some meetings) and the scope is far wider than mere websites and marketing techniques. What challenges do you face? Staff problems? Strategies for hiring employees, writers and subcontractors? Managing fast growth? Setting bigger goals? Accountability, to stick to the goals you set? More than likely, the help you need is right there in the room. Odds are, someone else has already cleared the hurdle you face.

In my mastermind group, we see things through a much wider lens. Sometimes a plan you’re about to execute is just about perfect – but one adjustment doubles your net profit, for almost no additional work.

I’ve had that happen to me a bunch of times in the last year, due to the mastermind alliances I have. One hour of solid advice I got from a friend and colleague brought in an additional $600,000 of revenue the following two years. So I don’t take this lightly.

Bubble-Riding vs. Staying Power

Have you ever been concerned that your business is doing well because it’s “riding a bubble”? Hey, sometimes that is the case. That’s not bad, it just is what it is. But often a small adjustment can ensure that you’re on solid ground when the bubble does burst. Navigating those waters is what this mastermind group is all about.

Plus, as part of our intensive two-day meetings, we’ll drill down into your sales process. If you haven’t fully mastered sales conversion, that’s okay – it’s not your fault. It’s challenging to learn new skills.

If you haven’t mastered the sales process yet, then know this – by the time we’ve had a couple of Roundtable sessions this year, you will be a master. A sales conversion black belt. We’ll work together until you’re at the point where you are in total command of your market, and you have a higher conversion rate than anybody else in your marketplace. You’ll be more focused and more in charge of your entire business, your colleagues will appreciate your new-found skills, and your family will appreciate the additional-income that will bring!

We’re going to help each other reinvent our businesses where needed… tune up our sales systems… set big goals and reach them… earn more money, take more time off… get that elusive reality of “Marketing On Autopilot” working for you so really do enjoy the Internet marketing lifestyle that most people only talk about.

Yes, marketing online does require vigilance, but when it’s running properly, only needs minor adjustments and little day-to-day maintenance. It’s an immensely valuable asset, financially as well as personally.

Why I chose the rather unusual name…

“Renaissance Club Roundtable”

The Renaissance was a golden age when artistic transformation and the scientific revolution charged ahead at unprecedented speed in Europe. The Renaissance today was the beginning of the modern advantages we now enjoy.

Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, and dozens of others greatly altered the trajectory of the world with their discoveries and innovations in the 1400′s and 1500′s.

Some cynics call the period leading up to the Renaissance as “The Dark Ages.” Yes, that period was tumultuous, but to label those years the ‘Dark Ages’ is a crass insult to the mathematicians, artists, chemists and visionaries who drove progress forward during that time. The very term ‘Dark Ages’ willfully ignores the progress that was quietly underway all along.

The “Dark Ages” Never Happened…

It just wasn’t until the Renaissance that the fruits of those efforts became apparent to all. The term “Dark Ages” was invented by incompetent historians with a hidden-agenda.

Remember the alchemists? Even Alchemy itself was in fact based on an abundance philosophy – a belief that there really is enough to go around for everyone, we just have to figure out how to create it. The alchemists thought wealth came through the transformation of lead into gold, when in fact – wealth really comes through the transformation of ideas into implementation.

When Intel turns sand into Pentium chips, that’s alchemy. When Microsoft or any other software company turns 1′s and 0′s into software that performs time-saving tasks for you, that’s alchemy. When Google organizes all the information in the world and puts it at your fingertips, that’s alchemy.

And it’s no different for you and me, though on a smaller scale – when you and I enter the conversation inside our customers’ heads, scratch their itch and provide them with a genuine solution to their problem, based on our knowledge and experience, that’s alchemy, too. Roundtable is a mastermind of modern-alchemy.

And then there’s the Roundtable aspect. What’s that? It’s the mystical table in Camelot around which King Arthur and his knights sat to discuss matters crucial to the security of the realm. They would go out alone into the dark forest and share their experiences and victories with one another. The un-adventurous need not apply.

And in Roundtable, who can say? We may also be found jousting, feasting and dancing together as well….

Enter The Business And Marketing
Renaissance Of The 21^st Century!

The period of history we are in right now is a Renaissance of business and marketing. The underlying principles were already discovered 100 years ago; False notions have been swept away and we are in a new dawn of forward progress. This progress will only accelerate.

It is because of this that I’ve formed the Roundtable for a select group of coaching graduates and consulting clients. You may not think of yourself as a Galileo or a DaVinci or a Michelangelo.

But you are successfully doing what very, very few people know how to do: You are starting a business from scratch and growing it into a profitable enterprise. In the face of brutal competition, in a business landscape that changes by the hour; operating with excessive taxation, extreme cynicism on the part of consumers, and a corrosive, anti-business sentiment propagated by the media, who portray hard-working entrepreneurs as hucksters and villains – in the midst of all this, you have built a successful enterprise.

That is no small accomplishment. While Enron, MCI/Worldcom and their Wall Street cronies happily ripped off investors and fed the cynicism, you planted seeds of growth. You’ve driven the real growth that corporate America can only pretend to create. What you do is really THE untold story of why we have a booming economy – despite offshore manufacturing, despite gas topping $3 per gallon, despite the fact that our top colleges and universities dump millions of educated derelicts into our streets every year.

Despite the fact that most businesses are run by corporate drones who fail to grasp even simple principles of cause and effect, investment and Return on Investment.

It’s because of your entrepreneurial and business spirit that I’m calling this Roundtable.

Roundtable = Personal Freedom Coalition

When I was in my early 20′s I had a rather strange entrepreneurial hero: Isaac Newton.

If you know anything about Isaac Newton, you know he was no entrepreneur. He was actually a rich kid from a wealthy family, and as such he didn’t have to work at all. Which is exactly why he had time to sit under apple trees and contemplate things like gravity. He didn’t have to have a ‘regular job’, so he had time to think.

The fact that somebody – his father, grandfather, whoever it was – the fact that they’d earned a fortune earlier made Newton’s discoveries possible. Who knows where the world would be today, had Newton been walking behind a horse, plowing some field, instead of using his head, exercising his imagination and satisfying his curiosity?

One of my hopes for Roundtable is that it frees each member up to do more personal exploration, exercise greater-imagination, do more things out of hope and act less from fear, and experience more freedom to do fun things, important things!

And There’s Yet Another Reason
I Call This Roundtable.

In my opinion, one of the great tragedies of modern education is the absurd notion that various kinds of knowledge exist in rigid, separate compartments. This is tragically untrue, literally creating culture wars between various spheres and disciplines.

It’s criminal. The result is engineers who think business people are idiots (that would be me, 17 years ago); ivory tower academics who think science, religion and philosophy have nothing to say to each other; people who never bother to step outside their own industries to discover that they can lift marketing ideas from an infomercial or a nonprofit and apply it to their own business; cynical, technocrat skeptics who declare that all things “holistic” are the work of evil thugs and con-artists.

Fact is, your business does not operate in a vacuum. Chances are almost everyone in Roundtable is in a different industry than you. This is an immensely eclectic bunch of people from all over the world – Canada and the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia, Austria… industries ranging from computer software to skin care to publishing to consulting; web hosting, logistics, e-books.

That means you can freely borrow ideas from them. It means the ideas you get from others in the group are not stifled by the ‘groupthink’ of any one profession or product category.

But it goes even further than that. Admittedly, one of my frustrations with my coaching Bobsled Run is that it realistically can only deal with the technical aspects of marketing – copywriting, autoresponder messages, web pages, tracking systems and all that – and while that’s all well and good, the inner psychology of success, the inner battles we all fight, don’t get addressed.

Benji Rabhan is founder of Morris Mediaworks. In November, 2011, he was honored at the White House in Washington D.C. as one of the Empact100 award recipients. This honor is given to the top 100 American entrepreneurs under the age of 30. He has wicked insights on sales conversion.

Bill Seagraves is CEO of CatchFireFunding, a company that facilitates funding of small business startups via tax-protected 401K’s.

Bradley Walker is owner of The Stretching Institute, a company that specializes in stretching, flexibility, and sports injury management.

Charles Howson is CEO of one of the UK’s premier consumer debt restructuring firms.

Daniel Hammond delivers turn-key marketing systems to Elder Law attorneys.

Ethan Kap is a highly recognized trainer and innovator in insurance and financial planning and author of the book Safe Money Millionaire.

Fathi Said is CEO & Founder of IX Web Hosting, one the world’s largest web hosting companies with over 100,000 customers.

Janine Sotelo is CEO of Vidcad, a software company that serves the audio/video installation market.

Jim Siwek runs a very successful Software as a Service (SaaS) firm in telecommunications.

Mickie Kennedy is owner of Ereleases.com, a major press release service.

Nancy Singleton runs a major chiropractic and weight loss center in Salt Lake City, UT.

Steve Tallent is CEO of BeeYoutiful, a popular mail-order catalog firm that sells alternative health supplements, creams and remedies.

Stew Walton sells very successfully to an old school segment of manufacturing.

Susan Kruger sells the most popular study skills curriculum for teachers in the world today.

Thomas Ingoglia is president of Ultra Entertainment, one of the most prominent CD and DVD suppliers.

Thor Sheffield runs a successful import/export company from mainland China.

Taco Oosterkamp operates the Dutch franchise of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and sells a variety of diverse software tools to both Dutch and International customers.

As you can see, this is a very successful, diverse, fascinating group of people. Almost none of them fit the stereotype of the carpet-bagger, spare bedroom online marketer (although a number of them do mainly run their businesses from a spare bedroom!); many of them have brick-and-mortar components to their businesses too, and every single one hails from a different industry.

That’s what’s so powerful about Roundtable: The extreme diversity of industries, experiences, market segments and life experiences flows into a formidable core of adroit team-members. What all of us have in common is we live life on their own terms, we defy stereotypes, we thrive not only on making money but making a positive contribution in the world; and we just can’t sit still. Can’t leave well enough alone. We press the edges, extend the boundaries, explore the periphery of what’s possible.

Just eating dinner with such daring people 3 nights a year might be worth the price of admission…

Know that I am very serious about this program. I have things to teach you, and you have things to teach me. Whenever a group of like-minded people gather, there is a level of energy that elevates everybody. The dynamics are such that one plus one equals not
2, but 3 or 4.

I’m not doing this because I need the money. Money is nice, but it’s no longer the thing that makes me roll out of bed every morning.

I’m doing this because I have a wider vision ? not merely helping my members help themselves to bigger piles of money, but elevating the level at which our game is played, raising the bar on how marketing and business in general are done.

Because marketing is the single most valuable skill in business today, savvy marketers have the potential to make huge contributions to the world at large. How? By introducing worthy, superior products and services, with higher levels of integrity, by literally shutting less deserving players out of the game.

There’s so much bullshit going on out there, and I’m sick of it. I think you’re sick of it, too, and I’m inviting you to be a part of the solution. With real human contact, not plastic, manufactured personality; facts, not pseudo-science; proof, not smoke and mirrors.

Doing Good In The World – And Earning More For It

When I help you and you go out and help your customers, then in some small way, I’m doing good in the world. I get to share in a small measure of good in every worthy deed you do.

Now make no mistake about it… the purpose of this group is that we will be getting together to make more money. I’m not ashamed to say that, and I hope you have no problem with that.

But please recognize that the secondary benefit is that I’ll help you identify your true goals in life. Perhaps making more money is not the driving force in your life – maybe you want to take time off and pursue a specific interest. Maybe you just want to drain some of the stress out of your life or get more control of your schedule. Whatever it is… we’ll identify it, and then I’ll help you put together a plan to achieve it. These life goal plans will be developed in our one-on-one private coaching calls, which are explained later in this letter.

Meanwhile we’ll meet in person as a mastermind group three times per year, and we’ll all share what’s going on in our businesses – talk about what we’ve been doing – and then we’ll work together to solve problems. All of this will be moderated and coached by me.

Those who know me, know that deep down I’m a marshmallow. Heck, I go visit AIDS orphans in Kenya (on purpose) and I tear up. I’m easy to get along with and I genuinely desire to help people succeed. I’ll bend over backwards for a student who’s going the extra mile.

But those who know me well also know I call a spade a spade. I’ve been ripped off by enough flim-flam men, I mince no words when I meet them. The other day I had a consult with a guy who, as it turned out, ran a “speed seduction” site. You know, one of those deals where the guy sells some e-book that teaches men precisely how to lie to a woman so she’ll believe him, and coax her panties off at maximum velocity. (And then he’s outta there, on to his next conquest.)

When he found out I was canceling the consult, he was furious. But I didn’t back down. I told him I’ve got a 9 year old daughter, and my job is to inoculate her against everything he’s teaching his customers how to do, and sorry, he ain’t getting’ no help from me…

Conversations like this are, of course, exceedingly rare. I certainly don’t expect to rake anyone over the coals for selling sleaze or whatever. But my point is: I’m not afraid to deliver a kick in the butt every once in awhile – ‘cuz we ALL need one sometimes. That’s what a coaching and mastermind group is for.

The Tide Can Always Turn…

My dad never got paid a huge salary, and I remember very lean times. Gas lines during the Arab Oil Crisis, washing and re-using plastic sandwich bags over and over again, drinking powdered milk instead of real milk. I remember once when he changed jobs and the new one paid better – mom and dad went to the grocery store and bought cheese, which to us was a luxury.

One time I desperately wanted to go swimming, which cost 65 cents. I could neither beg, borrow, or bargain with dad to get that 65 cents, not even by doing odd jobs around the house, ‘cuz he just didn’t have it…

In the mid-80′s things improved for us a bit, and dad bought a 1981 Buick Skylark. Dad never admitted it, but that car was a lemon. It ate money. Anytime there was any extra somewhere, the engine block would crack or the alternator would crap out. That car ensured that there was nothing left over, ever. And when you’ve got a car that eats money, you can never seem manage to replace it with a good one, can you? It just drags along behind you, a ball and chain around your ankle.

That was a long time ago, but I do remember it. Lean times.

More recently – less than a decade ago – I had a new baby at home, we were barely making it, and I would take “home assembly” projects from work to make extra money. My employer made these little screw assemblies for fuse holders that he would farm out to moonlighters. They paid 4¢ for us to assemble each one, and I remember me and Laura sitting in front of the TV, putting thousands of those stupid things together.

Again, I don’t think there’s any reason for any of us to go hungry. But things can change. Real estate can go down instead of up. Inflation could come back and haunt us again.

Five years from now, somebody you know will wake up living in his car and wonder what happened. There are no guarantees of prosperity, no matter how many positive affirmations we recite or whatever. What matters is alertness and performance.

Is There A Magic-Wand That
Will Guarantee Your Success?

Of course not. But you do have two enormous assets, which I know you are only beginning to fully profit from: First, in all the history of the world you are a totally unique individual. Unique fingerprints, unique passions and interests and talent zones.

Second, you have a unique history of experiences – a vast encyclopedia of people, places, events, successes and failures.

You have unique roles to play – husband or wife, son or daughter, friend, employer, teacher, parent, advisor. You have hopes and fears and blind spots and aspirations like all of us, and you know there are steps you can take to become even more successful, however you personally define success.

So what am I looking for in members of the coaching program?

I want people who:

• Are givers and not just takers. People who positively contribute to group discussions, who desire to help others and derive personal satisfaction by doing so
• Love the exhilaration of the hunt, the joy of challenge, the risk of failure and the thrill of success
• Steadily implement ideas and changes between each meeting and personally embrace Kaizen, continuous improvement
• Genuinely appreciate corrective advice from others. There’s an old Jewish proverb that says, “Correct a fool and he will hate you; instruct a wise man and he will be still wiser.” When I joined Carlton’s Insider’s Club in 2002, I told him: “John, give it to me straight, no sugar coating.” After he sent back the first critique, I asked if there was anything else. He said “Well, yes…” and beat me up some more.
  Made me rewrite the whole thing. Some people really don’t want that! But I expect that from my peers and mentors. And I want Roundtable members who also want that from their peers and mentors.
• People who are not “whiners” and do not introduce negative-energy into the group. In the exceedingly unlikely instance where someone is a problem, I’ll ask that person to leave; it’s just better for everyone that way.
• Maintain confidentiality
  - keep private information private, and don’t “steal” opportunities from others. We’re going to be discussing confidential matters in the group, and everyone needs to be confident their information will be kept
  safe.

Let Me Ask You A Question…

Have you ever started a project with gusto, gotten feverishly excited about it, then quit? Ever read a book, attended a seminar, only to quickly lapse into the same mundane routine – only to move on to the next new thing?

Having a good coach eliminates this. It makes you accountable. A good coach recognizes when you need encouragement, or if you’re getting whiny and you need a little kick in the butt. A good coach discerns when to guide you and when to help you figure out something on your own.

If you’ve gotten this far in this letter and truly understand what I’ve been saying to you… then this must be a very exciting time for you. This is one of those inflection points – one of those times when you will remember this season of your life and feel satisfied that you’ve made the right decision.

You are quickly coming upon a choice point in your life, where you will make a decision as to whether you’re going to continue to do things the way you’ve always done them… or whether you’re going to apply to join a group of like-minded business people intent on reworking their operations so that the business serves them, not the other way around. Soon I’m going to ask you to apply for Roundtable. I’m holding a spot for your application.

Please take this process seriously. I’m asking for references, and they will be checked. Your application will be evaluated, and then you’ll be notified as to whether or not you’ve been accepted.

(Please do not be intimidated by the application process itself. I’m much more interested in your desire and willingness to succeed and be a valuable member of Roundtable. To me, that’s the most important trait I’m looking for. Are you coachable? Past success is much less important to me than hunger to succeed. If you have both, so much the better.)

What All Is Included In
Roundtable?

First, in addition to the 2-day Intensive at my home, you get to come to 3 SMALL GROUP RETREATS per year. Each of these retreats is 2 days of intensive group discussion. You get a generous time slot to present your marketing and business challenges to the group, with about a dozen sharp minds working together to solve your problems and see advantages and opportunities that you didn’t see. These retreats will usually be in Chicago, but may be held in warmer spots in the winter :^)

(Last February our meeting was in Orlando. It was barely above zero, blizzarding in Chicago but 80 in Florida.)

On the night of the first day we all go out for dinner and it’s on me. The group is a wonderful incubator for strong relationships and many of my members put together very productive alliances.

The chemistry of each group is absolutely remarkable. Everyone gets a ‘creativity buzz’ that rarely if ever occurs elsewhere. (A similar mastermind is the place where my “Macbook Pro” promotion for the AdWords seminar was born. It nearly tripled my seminar attendance.)

You can expect the same kind of energy and synergy, and certainly the knowledge that I glean from my other information sources and groups will spill over and you will benefit from that, too. Second, you get to participate in my ongoing personal AdWords coaching sessions, for free.

Still, There Are Legitimate-Reasons Why You
Might NOT Choose To Join The Roundtable – Or To Even Read Further…

Have you ever heard the old saying?

IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND
THE MAN WITH ONE EYE GETS TO BE KING.

It’s true. And you may be so advanced compared to the rest of your industry, you may not need this to stay on top of your game to this degree. Some people are quite successful and not really as hungry as they used to be. If that’s you, this isn’t a match.

Also, some people don’t deal with criticism well. Or they listen to it and don’t act on it.

Some people are very secretive and excessively paranoid. They sit in a meeting and never say anything, they just lurk. That’s fine on a teleconference, not OK in a group mastermind.

You may be too far away. Some people receiving this letter are in the UK and Australia, away from the continental US. If a little Jet Lag is enough to hold you back, then so be it. However, as I said, people from all over the world – places as far as Austria, Singapore and Hawaii – come three times a year and soak up every stimulating-minute. Those who do participate in spite of the distance (Neil Waterhouse for example) reap great rewards and are great group members. (I do love diversity.)

Finally, if you are not willing to share what you are doing with the other marketers in the group… if you are afraid someone is going to “steal your ideas” and that troubles you, don’t apply. The reason is, the entire group is going to “steal” everyone’s good ideas. Think about this: If you tested a new marketing concept once a month, over the next year you’d have 12 tests under your belt. However, if everyone in a group of 10 tests a new marketing concept once a month, those 10 people will have tested 120 new ideas per year.

That creates more collective intelligence than one person can acquire in many years of careful experimentation. But again, if you can’t share with the group for fear someone is going to take your ideas, you shouldn’t do this.

(By the way no one will expect or demand that you disclose things like income or sales numbers – fine if you want to, but not required. This is not going to be one of those “my ding-dong is bigger than your ding-dong” clubs. You’re not in competition with the other members, we’re all in competition with ourselves and we’re there to help each other better our own best.)

Again, if you do understand the value of a coaching and mastermind group like this… if you fully realize the magnificent synergy that comes from the interaction… if you understand that the wisdom of a group far exceeds the wisdom of any one individual… then this program is for you!

And when you add the coaching and mentoring skills I bring… and if you can imagine the peace of mind and confidence that come from us working together, both on your business and your personal goals… then this program is for you.

My Dilbert Cube Escape-Story…

One of those critical inflection points for me was five years ago, when I left Synergetic Micro Systems, the last job I had before striking out on my own.

It was a beautiful Indian summer morning here in September when Al Qaeda decimated the World Trade Center in New York City – and the entire world was plunged into chaos. I remember where I was, you remember where you were. What I remember is going outside during those next few days (I live halfway between Midway and O’Hare airports in Chicago), and seeing and hearing no airplanes in the sky. The silence was eerie…

The eerie feeling didn’t go away. The phones stopped ringing at work (I was in charge of inside sales) it was as though the entire industrial market had just stopped cold. Sales dropped precipitously. Also, at that very moment we were in the quiet period that precedes a company buyout that had been many months in the making.

An agreement had already been reached between Synergetic’s investors and Lantronix Inc. to buy us out. They were going to give me my stock options and as of October 18th, 2001, I would have a new employer, if I accepted their job offer. I could stay along with the new company, I just needed to agree to keep some of those options tied up for awhile.

That looked very, very attractive, considering the silent Chicago air space and the silent phones. Quit my job in the midst of that kind of uncertainty? You’d have to be crazy to walk away from a good job in such circumstances. That’s what my co-workers told me.

But my wife, Laura (thank God for her) had different-ideas. Laura said, “Perry, if you’ve ever had a chance to strike out on your own, this is IT. I think you should bail.”

…She had more confidence in me than I did. Still, I needed a sanity check, some additional confirmation. So I went to a mastermind group I’d had the foresight to form 2 years earlier – I’d formed it before I really “needed” one.

The members of my group saw things much, much differently than my co-workers did.

One Guy – John LaTourettem, whose nickname in Martial Arts is “Quick Kill” – wrote me this note:

One gal – Suzy Seay, a financial planner, said, “Perry, you’re so gifted, you have so much to offer the world. The fact that “most folks aren’t risking new ventures right now” means there is great opportunity out there. It’s not as risky as you think
- but you won’t be able to see it clearly until you take the leap.”

To a person – with absolute unanimity – they said,

“Perry, take the money and RUN, RUN, RUN.
Get OUT and GET OUT RIGHT NOW.”

Let me tell you what happened next…

I told my boss I was not going to accept the job. He tried to talk me into staying, but I held firm. He then became very stern and informed me that I was to immediately clean out my desk and leave the premises.

He appointed someone to watch me clean out the desk, to make sure I didn’t steal anything (!) and I was ushered to the door. Just before I walked out onto the parking lot, my boss’s wife Gaye gave me a little hug and wished me well. I felt glowering eyes on my back as I walked out.

I got in my car and as I drove out, took pause to notice “My job in my rear view mirror for the last time.” The phones at work hadn’t been ringing, but my home phone started ringing.

People in my industry, who had always known me as “the Synergetic guy” wanted to know what was up. They would say, “Well I wanted to let you know we’ve got a position opening up and I wanted to see if you’d like to interview for it?”

It was going to take awhile before those stock options came through, and money would be tight for awhile, but I said, “My back isn’t against the wall and I’m keeping my options open. Rather than getting into an employment situation, why don’t we work on a project together and get to know each other?”

I converted job offers into part-time consulting assignments.

Replaced my income in 19 days!

Joy.

Elation.

A Certain Serenity, A Feeling Of Having Crossed
A Huge Chasm.

After 11 Years Of Bitter Struggle, The Realization Of A Dream.

I can’t begin to tell you how exhilarating, how quietly energizing it felt to know I’d finally escaped the rat race. It was almost surreal to wake up at seven thirty or eight or eight-thirty or nine in the morning, and instead of slogging through 18 miles of traffic, to go downstairs to my musty little basement office (with the washer and dryer puttering away in the corner) and know that I was in business for myself, after all those years of sweat and anticipation and mostly disappointment.

To turn on Mozart (or Marillion) and work on marketing projects uninterrupted for hours at a time, to see the sunlight streaming through the window instead of buzzing fluorescent lights. Unafraid that my phone-extension was going to ring and I was going to get summoned to someone’s office to get interrogated about something or some rumor that was floating around.

While we waited for the first checks to come in, we borrowed money from my brother Bryan and my friends Bob and Angel to keep the bills paid. The time window kicked in for parceling off my stock options.

That was scary, too – I had no idea what the stock was going to do from one day to the next, and if it ever went below $2.38, the “strike price” as they say on Wall Street, I would make zero. So for a couple of months I rationed them off as wisely as I could, at about 5 bucks a share – a nice gain. It was agonizing, watching the price fluctuate from one hour to the next. My stomach churned. Exciting but frightening.

One day I had a sell order for my last few thousand shares at $5.15 and then the stock shot up, liquidating the last of my stock. Later that day stock went up to almost $7 per share (!) and I was kicking myself for not holding out for a higher price! I felt awful that day, knowing I could have made tens of thousands more dollars, had I just been a little more patient.

All shares were sold, the liquidation was complete. I was out.

It was only about 3 weeks later, in the aftermath of Enron, the market was jittery and word leaked out about some accounting discrepancies at Lantronix. Lantronix’ stock took a gigantic beating. Their stock went from $6 per share to $2 a share in just 3 days and never recovered. In fact it continued to slide down to about a buck or so, where it stayed for 3 years.

I had gotten out, but all of the regular shareholders were still in. I’d been forced to liquidate my shares; the regular investors, however, couldn’t sell them for a year – restricted stock as they say on Wall Street. The chief investor lost 5 million dollars in those horrible 3 days and never got them back. $5 million, vanished, just like that. (And into someone else’s pocket.)

The Exact Day I Got My Shares of Stock Out-
The Mastermind Group Gets Serious-Credit
For Kicking Me In The Butt!

I Had Acted On The Advice I Received
From My Mastermind Group!

Leaving some stock on the table was part of the requirements for accepting the job, but I had taken the money and run run run. Even though common sense at the time suggested I should leave some of those shares in the pot and accept the job offer.

I was the only person at that company who did not take a job there, and in hindsight I turned out to be the ‘luckiest’ one of the bunch. Suddenly I wasn’t kicking myself for missing out on the $7 a share deal (!!!); I felt more like a guy who’d blithely sauntered out of the World Trade Center with a Bagel and Cream Cheese in hand, moments before the whole thing came crashing into a mountain of smoke and rubble.

With Lantronix stock in the toilet, they started cutting back and flogging my former co-workers until morale improved, as they say. It was total misery over there; meanwhile I was embarking on the adventure of a lifetime, getting brand new clients, developing some products to sell, and honing my skills.

Suzy had been absolutely right: There was a hidden opportunity in the chaos. The hidden opportunity was that in a down economy, companies were much more interested in hiring temporary consultants than taking on long-term employees. There couldn’t have been a better time to stake my claim as a freelancer. Yet even then, most people could never see that. They were frozen in fear and thought I was crazy.

My business started to climb upwards and continues to grow to this day. Last year my income was 10 times my best year as a corporate sales manager.

Come what may, I’ll always remember that special season of life where I ignored “common sense”, took contrarian advice from my savvy mastermind group members, and took the road less traveled. A season of victory, even as others were bemoaning defeat. Even in the wake of September 11.

A very bad dream for most, a new day of triumph for me. Again, I have my wife and mastermind-partners to thank for helping me make that wise decision. I cringe whenever I think about what my life might be like today had I not had that resource – and tapped it – and acted on their advice.

My Final Thoughts…

If you’re completely satisfied with your business, your marketing and your current direction, and you feel you are on track to reach all the goals you’ve set for yourself,… well if you felt that way, I doubt you’d have read this far.

Undoubtedly you understand the value of Roundtable. And you know that as you harvest the rewards of this group, your life will improve in so many ways.

I hope, having gone this far, that you won’t stop short, for whatever reason ? skepticism, procrastination, cost ? whatever the reason may be. You’ve gotten this far, and it’s now time to take action. Apply for Roundtable today and shortly after that, I’ll let you know whether or not your application has been approved. I’d hate to have to inform you that your application was not received in time. I look forward to receiving your application. But more than that, I look forward to working with you and coaching you.

Sincerely,

Perry S. Marshall