Clifford is from the Internet. You can tell by his thick Internet accent.

It’s the first night of La Fiesta de la Calle San Sebastian and we’re leaning on the wall of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s 12 below in Chicago but humid and 75 in San Juan.

Clifford and I are in conversation. The topic: wanderlust.

Clifford is one of our most eclectic Renaissance Club Roundtable members. He has no “home” as such. People hear his last name and imagine he’s Asian. He’s not. He’s half English, half Australian. Runs his businesses virtually, through the Internet. Travels from city to city, country to country. Has assets around the world. Chuckles and shakes his head you when you ask him where he’s from.

All of us in the Perry Marshall circle have this in us, some wild, unique, crazy variation on this eternal unsettledness. We are The Guild of the Chronically Unemployable. Forever – even those of us with spouses and families and homes – incurably deviant, and only growing more so. There is so little room for us in most corners of this world.

We are here as those who freely confess that we cannot and will not fit in anyplace else.

We are here, arrived bruised from constantly bumping into the tired masses on their long journey to the nebulous middle.

It’s warm and humid on this January night, this first night of the Fiesta de la Calle San Sebastian, and I am recounting to Clifford my four year escape earlier this decade to the unpolluted mountains of southwestern China. Four mind-blowing years that transformed everything about me.

And Clifford is asking, why did I bother to come home? Why did I decide that March day back in 2004 to end the great China adventure?

Because, I explained, it was time for the next adventure to start: this Google AdWords adventure. Time for the next chapter in the book to get written. So I moved back to my home in the American midwest and restarted anew.

And yet, Clifford and I agree, wanderlust still beckons.

Gentle triggers to this wanderlust abound. They seem to be whispering “India.”

A week ago Friday it was “Slumdog Millionaire.” A packed movie house on a windy, snowy Friday night. “Slumdog” is Danny Boyle’s throbbing, pulsating, high-energy story of Jamal, the young man in Mumbai who finds himself on India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and seems to know the right answer to every next question. At stake is a 20 million rupee grand prize. And the film retraces his violent, reckless life all the way back through his childhood and recounts every specific event that seemed to provide him the unexpected correct answer to each next question.

Clifford cannot stay still. Perry cannot stay still. I cannot stay still. None of us in this circle can stay still. We cannot rest. Our minds forever propel us onward to the next great thing. The next great project. The next grand adventure.

Director Werner Herzog said that if we do not find new images, we will perish. I am always and forever in search of new images.

And I am always and forever in search of new words.

And new ideas.

And new thoughts that nobody has thought before.

ADD, the Crock

I am ADD, they say. We are all ADD.

Many of us in the circle have been diagnosed as ADD by physicians. This “Attention Deficit Disorder” diagnosis is, of course, a complete quack’s crock, most of the time.

It’s an official clinical diagnosis, an official label, declaring that we just don’t fit in with the rest of the crowd.

We could never sit still and think in simple, obedient, linear tracks like the other students. Our minds and eyes and fingers and feet endlessly wandered. We squirmed and shifted in our seats. So the teacher called in the parents and the parents whisked us off to the doctor and the doctor, whose job it was to find empirical causes and effects and treat them with empirical medicines, prescribed the ritalin, got Mom and Dad on forced continuity, and solved the problem.

Have you been labeled too? Good. Join the club. Most of us here are ADD. John from Florida is ADD. So ADD in fact that he has to set up his office in a bathroom stall, with shotgun ear protection to keep out the noise and chatter from the office. Otherwise all the talking and movement and distractions will kill his ability to concentrate.

But when he’s in that stall working away, he is formidable. He is crushing the competition in his market.

Do I really have a “disorder?” Hell no. Does John? Hell, no. Does Perry? Hell, no.

Sharp, endlessly active minds that are always catching the new idea and noticing the next new and crazy and amazing thing, yes. Disorder? That’s a load of fecal matter.

I’ve known one human being in my life who I could say with full sincerity did have actual ADD. An actual disorder. His name was Stephen and he was an American living in China with me from 2000 on. Without his medication he couldn’t even complete a sentence.

I am not him. We are not him. Our roomful of entrepreneurs are not him. We’re just out-of-the-box non-linear thinkers that can’t sit still too long for any one single idea.

But when we get into the flow of our work, we’re unstoppable.

Perry is the reckless adventurer, undaunted by conventional boundaries, exploding with the energy to pursue new adventures. John is the new-idea-every-minute man who is dominating his market and dominating multiple search engines, because he refuses to stick with just one. I’m the drillbit thinker, alternately blowing holes in old stupid theories and seizing on the critical tiny details in the big picture that everyone else has missed.

Perry is clear on what he brings to the world. John is clear on it. Clifford is clear. I am clear, and getting clearer.

And when you are clear on what you bring the world, your life becomes indescribably simpler. And your presence in it takes on all the more power.

Is there anything as important as knowing what you bring to the world?

Yes, there is: Knowing what you intend to get from the world.

$250,000 for Lunch Means You Show Up Prepared

A Dan Kennedy e-mail turned my thinking on its ear yesterday morning.

Warren Buffett recently held an auction: the highest bidder wins an hour’s lunch with him. The proceeds all go to charity.

The winning bid? $250,000, for 60 minutes with Buffett.

Dan’s question to ponder was, what would you do to make that 60 minutes worthwhile?

Me, I’d show up prepared. I’d know what my purpose for being there was. I’d know what my questions are. I’d have everything written out, in descending order starting with the most pressing and vital.

I would clarify well in advance what precisely I intended to get out of the lunch. And how I would know when I had received satisfying answers.

This, my friend, is one of the most powerful secrets you can ever learn from watching effective and successful people do what they excel at: they know explicitly what they intend to get from the thing, whatever “thing” it is. And they know what they’re going to do once they’ve got it.

John the ADD Guy gave all of us in San Juan a powerful lesson in this when he showed up for his hot seat on Wednesday morning. He had been up past 12:30 the previous night honing his presentation and questions for the group down to the rawest, clearest specifics. And he had pages of stuff carefully mapped out on flip charts, and scores of intelligent, directed questions for the group to help him answer what his most important goals and most vital approaches should be for the next six months.

The result? Huge involvement from the rest of the group, and scores of key questions answered clearly and tons of powerful, creative ideas shared. Everyone learned something from John’s hot seat, not because he was a great teacher, but because he showed up with the right questions, and was an even greater learner.

As someone who’s done well over a thousand one-on-one AdWords calls I cannot begin to convey to you what power there is in showing up to a consultation with a crystal clear, finite objective written out for yourself, and stated in direct, plain language to yourself and to the coach at the beginning of the call.

It comes down to this pair of questions, one of the most far-reaching and useful question pairs you can ever ask – questions you should be asking yourself about every major thing you do during every waking hour of every day:

What is the outcome you want from this,
and how will you know you’ve reached it?

John didn’t stop with his Wednesday hot seat either. Thursday was lab day. Everyone in the room doing work and brainstorming and sharing ideas and asking questions. No structure, completely informal.

But John had his legal pad out and was bombarding every one of us with questions. He had a list of questions a mile long for Perry. Productivity questions. Software questions. Planning and prioritization questions. Self-discipline questions. Questions about financing and about charity donations. He bombarded Clifford with questions. And at lunchtime he bombarded me with questions about planning, about strategizing, about maximizing productivity, about keeping our workspace organized and our thinking free of clutter. And he wrote feverishly, nonstop.

You get from the world exactly what you come prepared to demand of it.

In Stark, Ugly Contrast: the Bitchers and Whiners

One of the great hallmarks of a whiner is that he has little or no clear objective, and no intention to actually reach that objective and be satisfied from it.

I attend Ken McCarthy’s System Seminar in Chicago every year. It’s always 2-3 days of high-intensity education and learning. I’ve learned that the way to turn a System experience into gold is to show up with two “tiers” of ideas that I intend to find and implement:

The A list: 1-2 major groundbreaking, business-shaking “aha!” ideas that I will go back home and make absolute top priority for immediate and thorough implementation, without hesitation.

The B list: 4-7 additional solid ideas that I’ll put into practice over the next 3-6 months.

It does not matter which session or where I get my ideas. When I get them, I will know. In addition, every session I set foot in, I will not walk out of without having written down at the very least 1 single solitary good thought or concept or idea from it. I may have to search long and hard, but I will find something.

I know so many people who do this. They know exactly what they want, and they always end up getting it.

And those people, I’ve found, all have one other curious thing in common: they virtually never complain about the seminar or its content.

The others? The whiners and bitchers? You can smell them 100 feet away. They want to cry and moan, so they cry and moan. And they surround themselves with other unhappy criers and moaners. And generally go home empty-handed and unhappy.

I have not the slightest interest in spending time with those people. And neither should you.

Pinchos & Rum in Old San Juan

Yet another mind-blitzing Roundtable came to a close on Thursday. So afterwards a group of us headed out on Thursday night to Old San Juan to take in the first night of San Sebastian and satisfy just a little of that incurable wanderlust. Clifford (dressed to kill) and Jaco, and Perry and me.

Gorgeous, humid January night. Wall-to-wall people on lamplit cobblestone streets. Drums and rhythm bands at every corner. Dancing and laughing. Beautiful young men with beautiful young women. Smells of rum and frying foods and exotic ice drinks and cigars and cologne and perfume and intermittent rain and night air. Pulsing energy and pounding drum rhythms. Smiles on all faces. And the unexpected feeling that you’re perfectly safe in the crowd.

Jaco and Perry talked info theory and God. Clifford and I compared notes on world travel. I snapped photos from my iPhone and oddly did not yearn for my SLR.

Clifford’s question rattled: why did I come home? Why did I leave my overseas adventure?

Again, it was to pursue new adventures of the mind at home. And yet my happy ADD wanderlust continues to call, to beckon, to shout from far away to come, travel, share the world.

India calling? Yes. When? I do not know. But I must answer these calls when they come. I must go see the world. For the food. For the music. For the people. For the photography, for the new images that feed the soul. Oh, the endless, unbelievable panorama of images.

And while Clifford and I sat along the Old San Juan wall and talked of world travel and of the power of asking the right questions, a thought occurred to me.

One of National Geographic Magazine’s best-loved contributors, a nature photographer and a people photographer and a brilliant wildlife photographer, lives right here in my home town. His name is Joel and he is in fact my neighbor.

I am passionate about photography. And yet here is a brilliant resource I have never dared, or even thought, to seek out.

So it’s time for me to write him. Or call him. Beg an hour of his time.

And prepare – prepare long and good and hard – my list of probing, pointing questions for this experienced photographer. His deepest insights, his hardest-learned wisdoms. Lunch on me. Whatever additional good deal I can bring to the table. Money, adulation, insights of my own – whatever will seal the deal and earn me an hour of his priceless expert time.

And then grab my camera, hop on the next flight past the horizon and go capture the world.

It’s time again.

To your success,
Bryan Todd