Poodles get their food and water bowl filled every day. They sleep on the couch, watch Seinfeld reruns with the kids. Their owners take them for trots down the sidewalk.

Wolverines live in the woods, brave ice and snow, mark out large territories, sleep in the wild, eat what they kill.

Poodles live in cubicles.

Wolverines live free.

Poodles think the day they were born, some other guy in some other maternity ward was also born – with a responsibility to give THEM a job.

Poodles demand that somebody pay for their health insurance. Wolverines understand: If you gotta get somebody to tend the cash register, you buy the health insurance.

You deliver a steady paycheck, even if that means taking a 2nd mortgage on your house or calling in a favor to keep your biz running. (Ever done that?)

Wolverines hustle 14 hours a day revving their business to liftoff, eating rice and beans while their poodle friends sip lattes and take Disney vacations.

I talked about Poodles and Wolverines at a seminar in Mexico. The VP of a large bank in the Middle East says to me, “Hey wait a minute…. did you just get done calling me a poodle??? You have no idea the politics and petty wars I wage every day, just to get to my food bowl.” For 3 days he was bugged by this.

I said, “That is correct sir. There’s no law that says Poodles will be nice to each other. If you can deal with a non-guaranteed food and water bowl for a couple of years, you can actually own something when it’s all done. Same level of misery you’re enduring now.”

You know what that convo tells me?

He’s a Wolverine who happens to have a Poodle job right now. He won’t forever.

I discovered this early on. When my biz was brand new I sold a Lead Generation system for B2B. I thought scrapping sales guys on commission would buy it. But the folks who actually bought it didn’t have jobs. They were full-on Wolverines – often brand new startups.

*Occasionally* a scrapping sales guy would come along, reach into his pocket, and spend the $700. Then I noticed:

Every single one of those guys quit his job and started his own gig within 12 months.

Sure sign of a Wolverine: Investing in your own education. On a repeated, voluntary, ongoing basis.

Sign of a Poodle: Only invest in what you can get The Man to pay for. Or that you can get student loans for. Or an education that other Poodles ‘get’, like an MBA.

Poodles rent their education. Wolverines buy it.

The signature of the 21st century is: 5% producers, 95% consumers.

You can’t create stuff on an iPad or a smart phone, you can only consume it. You need an actual computer to produce something of serious value. When you create stuff, you have to THINK. You can’t just “like” and “react.”

People think sharing a funny picture on Facebook and getting 46 likes is producing. It is not. It’s being a consumer with friends. It’s not even level with being on Student Council in high school.

But there’s a flip side.

ANYTHING you want to master, you can learn how or find someone who can teach you.

There has never been a time when the path to mastery was so well paved. Anything you wanna learn – marketing, business alchemy, jazz piano, silicon wafer manufacturing – it’s all out there. You can achieve mastery faster than any other time in history.

Millions of poodles will buy your stuff and consume it.

But you have to decide. Decide to be the producer. And more than anything that means DISCIPLINE to ignore the poodle conversations out there. And the fruitless political debates with people who aren’t trained to think anyway – so you can go DO.

You must decide, every second of the day, whether you’re going to be a Poodle or Wolverine. You have to decide *every time you pull your phone out of your pocket.*

When you’re top badass wolverine with your own 100 mile territory, some of your poodle friends think you got lucky.

But last night they watched Hulu. You read a business book.

You KNOW why you’re the Alpha dog. As for their opinion? Frankly it doesn’t matter.

Perry Marshall

“The time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.” -Baron Nathan Rothschild

Poodle: Wikipedia. Wolverine: National Park Service

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.