Gotta tell you a 100% true story about a wild and crazy serial entrepreneur, a guy whose life is a lesson in estudiante-ness.
The first time I was ever invited to talk about AdWords at a seminar was by Ken McCarthy, but my first chance to do it was actually a month before. Matt Furey held an event in Florida and he invited me to come speak.
I showed up with my power point slides about the Wright Brothers and their first plane and split testing and all that, and gave my first-ever presentation.
I had an order form for a book I had not yet finished, “The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords” and a guy sitting one seat over from the projector turned the form back in to me sixty seconds after I handed it out.
That guy was Kevin Thompson. A “hungry” guy if there ever was one. Kevin started showing up on Mastermind calls.
A year or two later I was in a meeting somewhere, a mastermind group. With a bunch of different guys who teach and coach. Someone mentioned a guy named Kevin. Said something like “He does everything I tell him to do.”
“You mean Kevin Thompson? Hey, I know him. He does everything I tell him to do too.”
Someone else said, “Me too.”
“I wish all my customers were like Kevin.”
(Sometimes people assume we prefer slow learners with money who never actually do anything and just buy everything we offer ’em. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all c-r-a-v-e an eager student.) Kevin sure was that student.
He sold chemicals for killing mold. (Talk about an exciting niche! What a romantic thing to specialize in.) He built GetMoldSolutions.com into a tiny empire, painstakingly applying every imaginable marketing technique to an otherwise unremarkable topic.
Then he went on to something else, and something else.
The guy would just relentlessly execute instructions.
And I gotta tell you, ten years later, if any of us authors and consultants dropped dead on stage, Kevin could step up and finish most of our talks without a beat. He’d probably add a thing or two that we would’ve forgotten to mention.
In regular school, there’s a shame, a stigma, associated with being like Kevin. In public school, the eager, curious kid who sits in the front row, the one who’s passionately engaged absorbing, questioning, debating, raising his hand, staying late after school… they call him the Teacher’s Pet.
They call him a geek and a nerd.
They beat him up and steal his lunch money on the playground.
He walks down the hall and someone nails him in the arm with a clenched fist. Gonna take the smart kid down down a notch or two.
After so many years of that, he grows ashamed of his curiosity. He doesn’t let it show anymore. Eventually he finds himself in the back row along with all the other apathetic kids. He too becomes paralyzed with apathy.
Eventually, he even forgets what it was like to be curious and driven to discover a world filled with wonder.
Suddenly thirty years later he’s staring blankly at the tail lights ahead of him, sipping hot sludgy coffee on the expressway on the way to work at a job where if you excel at what you do, you make everyone else look bad.
The acid bath of mediocrity eats through his skin until his nerves are dead and he doesn’t feel anything anymore.
He lumbers through his day and he feeds his family and meets his obligations and barely remembers what it was like to yearn for something more.
In fact, just the thought of yearning for something more hurts so bad, he can barely stand to think about it.
So every time he starts feeling that restlessness, he pops in a DVD. Gladiator is a really cool flick. If I watch it, I can feel like a rebel and a victor without getting my chest sliced open in a coliseum of gaping spectators.
Except…. you can’t.
All real gladiators face knives and shields and fists.
Every battle sooner or later gets waged in front of spectators.
And a guy or gal with dead curiosity and numb nerves is not quick or agile enough to step out of the way when that sharp blade comes swinging round.
Why was Kevin different? I dunno. Maybe it was his job on a fishing boat where he lost both front teeth and almost his life. Maybe it was being blind in one eye and always feeling different from everyone else. Maybe it was some moment I don’t even know about, when he just resolved to stand out. Maybe it was some late nite conversation where someone helped clean out his inner head trash.
What I do know is, eager estudiantes get something out of the game that “cool” “nonchalant” estudiantes don’t. What I do know is, if you paid your tuition you should NEVER be ashamed to sit in the front row and ask as many questions as the prof will answer.
What I do know is, every professor loves a curious student. He scans the room looking for passion. When he finds none, he goes home a little less alive than when he came.
When I was a kid, I was insatiably curious. I would ask my dad science questions. My dad didn’t have a scientific bone in his body. “Dad, how do cars work?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do radios work?”
“I don’t know.”
Eventually I just had to go to the library or read the encyclopedias that our friends gave us. But I would find out. Somehow, public education did not succeed in pounding the curiosity and wonder out of me.
Right now the world is in a state of extreme cynicism and despair. There is an atmosphere of helplessness, of victimhood. An overwhelming sense of resignation. A belief that if the next political candidate doesn’t solve our problems, then they’re probably unsolvable. It permeates endless chatter, a million words a second, 24/7/365.
That belief is poison.
It will kill you.
It goes hand in hand with lack of curiosity, sitting in the back of the class throwing spit wads and acting “cool” and scorning the few who came to learn something.
You cannot afford to live that lie for a single minute.
A wondrous world is everywhere around you, sending you silent signals. My buddy Tom Hoobyar used to say “There’s burning bushes everywhere” referring to the story where God talked to Moses from the burning bush.
Wisdom is coming at you 24/7, leading you away from slavery into freedom, if you only have the discernment to pick out which voices to listen to. And the courage to be like Kevin. The courage to be curious and step into that coliseum and fight.
Perry Marshall
P.S.: When I told my adoption story last winter, I explained that “RH” stands for “Reluctant Husband.” Kevin heard that and said, “Hey Perry… I’m an RH!” He was scared of making that leap. Like me. Like we all are.
He and I talked about it, and he decided he didn’t want to be an RH anymore. So he and his wife are ambling down the adoption trail. So Kevin’s an eager estudiante of… being an adoption dad now.
If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.
Congratulations, Kevin. May your tribe soon increase.
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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.
19 Comments on “Shame, Curiosity, "RH" and the Best Estudiante Ever”
You know, sometimes I wonder about these stories of school making people lose interest. The problem isn’t the school and the other kids, it’s the person him/her self that considers being invisible more important, that really is the problem.
Most people are born as drones, they prefer to follow rather than to take matters into their own hands.
See the fear in so many people’s eyes when you put them in a situation where they have to take matters into their own hands.
Mediocrity has the funny property that it applies to most people, not because it’s a bad or good thing, but because if it applied to few people, it wouldn’t be mediocrity.
Everybody fits in mediocrity in some way or another, and in some way or another everybody also is unique. If what you´re unique in is able to make you money, a teacher can be very useful.
What you really need to learn, regardless of what you do, are the basic principles of success. What those are I leave to people like Perry and his colleagues to explain.
Bravo!
I’m one of these people as well who is perpetually learning.
Any minute that goes by without me creating or discovering something feels so wasted it makes me flinch. Makes me feel anxious. Makes me sit on benches stairing at the moon thinking “Am I throwing my damn life away?”. I don’t know why, but boredom is the vilest of sins.
Take a suicide. Think that’s bad? Throwing the rest of your life away? Know whats worse? Throwing the rest of your life away without ever making a decision to end that state of human waste. Never saying:”Here, I’mm going to do this, and I’m gonna do it properly”. That’s worse than killing yourself. That’s just prolonging the misery.
Take this story from my life. I used to have a lot of trash in my head back in my early teens, ten to thirteen. I was clinically depressive, but noone noticed. My grades had gone south, my future prospects were as bright as a brick wall, curtesy of walmart. My life goal was to work like an idiot till I was 30, and then die of karoshi – death due to work exhaustion. In retrospect, it wasn’t a life goal but a cynic spit on my own face, but man was I bitter. There was one night, when my parents told me they didn’t hope anything for me anymore, that I though of ending it. Luckily, I got scared.
Change of location, change of perspective. I moved, took it as a clean slate, and set out to fix myself. It took me 3 years, I’m 16 now, and I am happier than ever. I learned to embrace all that which school had vivilified for me, and I’m more productive than I’ve ever been. My future looks bright now, and I’m aiming to gobble up every little tidbit of information that I can to make it even brighter.
I now look at the world with a complete new mindset, and it’s tremendously fulfilling. Let me try to articulate it for you, whoever might be reading it.
My past doesn’t concern me much. Neither does my future, because I know if I keep on my path and do the best I can, I will eventually succeed. Other people don’t concern me if they aim to enrage me or dull my existence. However, if they want to create happiness for both sides, I greet them with open arms. They’ll live their life, I’ll live mine. For all I know, I could be dead. Therefore death doesn’t concern me either. When he comes, he comes.
I can’t even tell you how many arguments, how much emotional strain and how much misery this attitude has saved me.
WOW Oliver…
I’ve known plenty of Guyz & Galz who went well past 26 years of age without having figured out half of what You’ve just composed. (Myself Included.)
Now… Just…
Don’t YOU Forget IT.
Wow Perry – this is brilliant stuff. Great reminder of the power of curiosity and perseverance… and above all, execution. Your Mastermind calls helped me make the leap from 9 to 5 to independent consulting 3 years ago. So much happier for having made the change. Thanks for sharing such great stories and ideas.
I can remember that shift in my school years.
In 3rd grade I used to sit in front and get awesome grades. But as I entered 5th grade the bullies started coming out. Which caused me to start sitting in the back and giving into being average.
When I turned 20, I finally figured out what was happening, and decided to turn my life in the opposite direction.
Today I run a handful of internet companies and travel the world. Guess what… Those bullies still pass gossip around about me, but in reality I know they are just embarrassed that I exposed them and their lazyness.
I know Kevin Thompson,because i was in his newletter list and i read his posts in his blog.Kevin Thompson is a nice person and has a nice family.
Perry, although we have never met in reading this someday I would love to have the opportunity to meet you and your family. You described my husband as the wonderful man he is indeed. I admire his hunger for learning and discipline to make his business work. Thank you for sharing your adoption story with him and I pray in the near future we will have our little one with us.
I look forward to meeting you too!
Loved the line ‘Every battle sooner or later gets waged in front of spectators’. How true. Every new product launch, every new idea you communicate to subscribers….they’re all battles ultimately and they’re all fought in public. Inspiring stuff Perry. Thanks
Great post Perry!
It makes me realize how lucky I’ve been in terms of schooling.
I live in Pasadena, which is home to JPL and Caltech. And I’ve gone to the private schools where a majority of the parents come from pretty far out educational backgrounds.
In junior high, for the scientific design challenges for the science fair, they seemed to be done by PhD’s, not 11 years olds.
Pretty funny is see an 11 year old walk out with probably a $5,000 protype that was probably laser machined in the same lab that did “Curiosity”.
Until your post, I thought my experience was “normal”. Actually, I never even thought about it till now.
Adam
I can say something similar. I thought my Christian elementary school was kind of fuddy-duddy but I got a good solid education.
My high school in Lincoln NE didn’t seem anything special, but some program ranked it as one of the top 3 Junior High/HS’s in the US. A girl in my expository writing class who sat right next to me and sometimes ate lunch with my crazy friends is now a NY Times best selling fiction author.
So I did in fact have it better than most. My kids have it even better than that, but…. I’m not sure they know it :^>
Perry,
They won’t know until they have to start paying $12,000 for Pre-K. $18,000 for grade school. And $29,000 for high school!
Those are what the schools I went to currently cost. Or I should say “the investment in their future good life”.
I didn’t know this until Maria & I started looking for schools for our son, who is 2 years old now.
Forget about buying a house. Try just affording education.
But, I think they’ll wake up when they (God willing) have kids somebody.
Adam
Perry, I always love reading what you write. Whenever an email from you lands in my inbox, I drop whatever I’m doing so I can see what words of wisdom you have to share.
There’s only a VERY small number of people who have made that kind of impression on me over the years.
As you can imagine, your words today struck a deep personal chord with me.
I want to sincerely thank you for sharing… and… for seeing in me some of the things I couldn’t see on my own.
And thanks for the profound impact you’ve had on my life over the years.
I’ll keep you updated on our adoption process.
Incredible piece and timing. I’m right there. Thanks very much for writing this, it is a great help.
Perry, one of your best ever. Great portrait of the 9-to-5 organizational man and his life of “quiet desperation.”
Com’on Bob…
Finish the thought:
THIS IS One of Perry’s Best–EVER…
But IT Wouldn’t Be IF IT Stopped At Just Being…
A “Great portrait of the 9-to-5 organizational man and his life of ‘quiet desperation.'”
What Makes THIS Great IS That Perry Walked US All Thru An Entire Thought Process (As REAL Scientists/Engineers Are Supposed To Be Trained To Do)… “P.P.O.C.” STYLE:
Accurately & With Enough Detail To Make Meaning Clear To The Audience Without Becoming Bogged Down IN Non-Essentials–HE DESCRIBED THE:
PROBLEMS
PROCEDURES
OBSERVATIONS
CONCLUSIONS
For The Issues That He Wrestled With–Stated Briefly IN The Title–“Shame, Curiosity, “RH” and the Best Estudiante Ever”
Perry’s Genius IS…
He Can Apply The Scientific Process To What’s Normally Considered The Domain of “Literature & Humanities” And Write of American Business Experience IN Ways & BY Means THAT We Can All–NOT ONLY–See Where/When/What Our REAL PROBLEM(S) ARE… BUT ALSO–GET A CLEARER UNDERSTANDING of WHERE/WHEN/WHAT&HOW-TO REPAIR/RESOLVE&OTHERWISE-REORGANIZE OUR SELVES & OUR BUSINESSES SO THAT THEY & WE CAN TRULY TAKE-OFF & FLY IN GOOD (NOT simply “Feel-Good”) DIRECTIONS.
Wow, what a story. Perry, you have a way of cutting right into my brain and heart, digging deep, throwing away all the crap so I can see the truth. I see people everyday who have lost that curiosity and wonder and it’s sad. When I feel like one of them, I just have to read one of your stories to be revitalized and energized. Thanks!
This is a great story, and I look forward to meeting Kevin somewhere, someday (I just know it will happen).
What is truly great for me, is that yesterday I had a really bad day, and today I came in determined to make this one better. So to receive such a great story and motivation in my email was perfect timing!
Thanks Perry!