How is it that two different people with identical tools, the same education and similar ambitions can turn out so differently?

One goes from zero to $10 million in 5 years.

Another’s still spinning his wheels.

WHY?

I’ve worked with many hundreds of entrepreneurs and observed them very closely. Have seen both stories many times. I have spent a LOT of time thinking about this. What’s going on?

Allow me to tell you a story from my baloney sandwiches and ramen soup days.

It was a freezing day in January. I had set up an appointment with an executive in Indianapolis, which is 3 hours from Chicago. Why Indianapolis? Cuz when you’re 50+ miles away with a briefcase in your hand, you’re an expert. So I was told.

I remember feeling prompted to call the guy & confirm our appointment but I never got around to it. Figured if he didn’t show I’d just call him and put him on the spot and the meeting would happen anyway. I left my day job and drove down there. It was snowing all the way.

I get to the restaurant and he doesn’t show up.

I slide a few quarters into the pay phone and call him. Cost fewer pennies than using my cell phone at the time.

“Oh, I’m sorry sir, I forgot,” he said. “I am so sorry. Hey…. I’m leaving on a trip real early tomorrow morning, it’s already getting late. Can we reschedule? This is just a terrible night for me to try and do this,” he says.

Couldn’t convince him to leave his house.

I finished my soup and got back in my car. Drove somewhere nearby and dropped off a tape at someone else’s house.

I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Perry, the reason you’re going to have things other people don’t have is you’re willing to do the things that other people aren’t willing to do.” (We can credit Motivational Tape #974 for that piece of wisdom.)

I was driving down some street on the way to I65. I hit a bump and suddenly my tire had a hole. Went flat in just a few minutes and now I was driving on my rims.

Made it to a Quick Shop. Surveyed my flat tire.

Spare was a tiny little doughnut spare that I knew would be suicide in 170 miles of snow. The car would be pulling to the side the whole way.

Bought a can of spray that supposedly plugs tire leaks when you attach it to the tire stem. Blew the foam into the flat and got it to inflate. But still…. the idea of driving with a tire with a hole in it patched by foam spray did not sound very safe.

And it was 9:15pm.

I was obviously very stupid, but even then my stupidity had its limits. I was not going to drive home on that tire if I could possibly help it.

Frantically searched the phone book for a tire shop that might be open at 9:15pm on a Monday night.

After a dozen phone calls I found ONE – a truck stop on the South side of Indianapolis. The ONLY tire store in a city of 750,000 people that was still open.

Got directions and drove down there. Bought a brand new overpriced tire with whatever margin was left on my credit card.

Rolled out of town at maybe 10:30pm and slogged through blinding sleet all the way back to Chi-town. It was one of those nights where you can barely see the tail lights of the car ahead of you and the road is pock marked with ice and you don’t dare drive faster than 45-50MPH and often as slow as 25-30.

Indianapolis to Chicago is, um, longer than 3 hours when you’re going 40 MPH.

Good thing I had a stack o’ motivational tapes keeping’ me company.

Good thing I had, who knows, probably a whole platoon of guardian angels ridin’ along. Workin’ them angels, baby.

I did learn one thing from that episode:

When you have a premonition that you should call the guy before you leave, you don’t question it or shrug it off. You just call the guy and that’s that.

In hindsight I was laboring over an almost crippling disease of self-punishment. It was almost like I was trying to become worthy of achieving some form of sales success and as long as I proved I was willing to do the work, I could tell myself – temporarily – that I was a good guy.

Workin’ them angels.

So after all that stupidity and the pounding through oak doors with the soft skin of my nose, how did I manage to unhook myself from all that punishment?

I’ll give you a hint: It took a lot more than learning “the principles of direct response advertising and marketing” yada yada yada. There was a lot of head-game stuff going on too.

In Austin I’ll give an extended talk on how I grew through this experience and flipped some major “switches” in my mind and heart. And, after years of coaching fledgling businesses to pay dirt, the path I’ve seen others take in liberating themselves from the life they wanted to escape and into a world of their own creation.

Requires only a $50 deposit for Mastermind Club members.

http://www.perrymarshall.com/mastermind/

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.