Marcus is eleven, and last summer I took him to father/son camp. Years ago Marcus’ younger sister Andria lived with us for three months as our foster daughter.
Marcus (a.k.a. “Tank”) became my buddy from the inner city and has been ever since.
So here we are with no electricity, no running water, 3 days on the Tahquamenon river and every day we do some daring activity like pole-climbing or the ropes course.
The ropes course is 25 feet above the ground and even though Marcus had a helmet, climbing gear and able assistants at every side, he was totally intimidated.
The first section was a sort of horizontal rope ladder that sorely tested his balance and stability. At long last he made it across. But then the next section was a tightrope walk on a single cable…. That’s when Marcus lost it.
He looked down at the ground far below and shook with terror. “I’m afraid of heights!” Just to put one foot on that cable and put his weight on it took all the will he could summon.
When he got his second foot on the cable, panic swallowed him up. He melted into a crying, quivering, sobbing mess.
He begged, he pleaded, ‘please, please, let me go back!’
But… on the ropes course, you can’t go back. Once you’re on, you have no choice but to finish it.
After awhile this became a real problem. The camp counselors tried to soothe him and reassure him but to no avail. Their experience of helping hundreds of other dads and kids get across meant nothing in comparison to the yawning expanse of terror that lay below that cable.
But then one of the counselors had an idea. She adjusted his harness and physically proved to him how far he would fall if he completely lost control, by making him sit down right there on the high-wire.
He couldn’t even fall far enough for his butt to touch that cable. He sat there and realized how low, low actually was.
No matter what happens, Marcus, no matter how bad you screw up, you won’t die. You won’t tumble helplessly to the ground and shatter your bones into pieces.
You’ll be OK.
That was the turning point.
He got a hold of himself. He calmed down. He tested and re-tested his harness and realized, hey wait a minute, I can only fall about four feet, not 25. This harness really will hold me up.
He was still terrified – his emotions were still raging in a war with his mind – but he started putting one foot in front of the other and making progress.
I told the camp counselor, “This isn’t one one-hundredth as dangerous as the neighborhood he grew up in, with drive-by shootings and crack dealers on the corner.
“But he doesn’t know that.”
This reign of terror probably lasted 25 minutes. It held up a lot of other campers. But Marcus eventually made it all the way through the ropes course, including the giant rope swing that spans 100 feet (took him a full minute before he was willing to open his eyes).
Somebody at Camp Paradise took notice and decided to give Marcus some recognition. This wouldn’t be a big deal to some of the other boys but it was to Marcus, it was a major victory. Maybe the grandest accomplishment of his 11 years. At dinner the camp director announced that Marcus has triumphed over the ropes course and 120 men and boys gave him a round of applause.
He got high fives the rest of the day, and you should have seen his beaming smile. The most celebrated kid at camp.
I remember watching him during the worst part of the terror, thinking “Man, that’s me, at a whole bunch of different points in my life. This isn’t something that happens to you once in your life at summer camp. The Black Wall of Fear is something that you stare down multiple, multiple times. Especially if you’re an entrepreneur.
And not just in business; The Black Wall of Fear obstructs your path in every sphere of life that matters. There will always be times when the lizard part of your brain is screaming at you, to retreat to safety and sanity.
Hey, isn’t this precisely the thing that keeps millions of people locked in allegedly safe, secure Dilbert Cubes? Laboring miserably under buzzing fluorescent lights… going home to colorless nights washed down with a beer and a bag of Ruffles. Drowning the droning of their dreary, desolate lives with episodes of ‘reality TV.’
Creating products or inventions or dreaming up things and never having the courage to step out and expose them to the harsh light of day.
Hey Marcus, don’t ever forget this – you’re going to confront this same Black Wall of Fear at every important transition of your life.
You will always question your sanity and you will always wonder, at some level, if the bottom is going to fall out. If the other shoe is going to drop. If you’re going to tumble to the ground and smash every bone in your body to bits.
Dear friend and subscriber, I only know of ONE way to defeat that black Wall of Fear:
Punch your fist right through it and drive on.
Do it.
-Perry Marshall
Experience a complete business turnaround in 48 hours, December 1-2: http://www.4manintensive.com/
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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.
11 Comments on “Smashing through the Black Wall of Fear”
?Hola!
No est? seguro de que esto es verdad:), pero gracias a un cargo.
Gracias
Worker
I’m totally staring at that long damn cable right this minute! In changing my business focus over to my real, no-kidding, born to do this gifts of organizing, simplifying, and creative problem solving around systems and processes, I find myself at a standstill.
Intellectually, I *know* I can walk across the ropes (I did it in 2003 when I started this business, and in 1997 when I started another business). But this time *feels* different, bigger, more important, more REAL.
Lots of people know me, know what I’m good at, and expect me to have great success in this Round #2.
And I am completely freaking out! My lizard brain is shouting, “Go back. There’s too much risk! You have too much to lose this time!”
But I’m finding one way each day to stomp that little lizard under my hiking boot heel, to put one booted foot in front of the other to cross that wire.
It ain’t easy, but that part of me that knows that I’m brilliant at what I can do for people in business is just feisty enough to keep moving forward. Harness or no, it’s about keeping on keeping on.
Angela
Go Angela!
Hey Perry,
Awesome story. On Friday I was at an 8 hour intensive training session where I witnessed the same thing happen for a man in his fifties who was launching a new product on the web. He is new to this stuff and was terrified but bit by bit made amazing progress throughout the day. He’s now on his way to becoming a new web based entrepreneur. Encouraged him to sign up for your email list by the way.
Could you let us know where to find more information on the father’s son’s event you mentioned? There is a similar organization here in Vancouver called the Young Men’s Adventure Weekend. http://www.ymaw.com Sounds like the organizers could learn a thing or two from the men who run the group you mentioned.
Thanks
Adam
Camp Paradise is in Northern Michigan: http://www.willowcreek.org/camp/site/
Fear keeps a lot of us from doing things we want/need to do. It’s an ongoing battle, but with the time and dedication, we can all beat that black wall!
I graduated from college and lucked in to a sales job that paid me $50K a year and 25 paid vacation days from day 1.
Quit that job to go work for a 5 man software company in Phoenix. We voted on names for the company. I voted for Silverbox Software, they voted for Infusion Software.
8 months later, I got laid off because Infusion was going to sell their product through JV’s with a mortgage coach, a carpet cleaning coach, and most of all, the coach of the coaches!?!? (Reed Hoisington, Joe Polish, and Dan Kennedy)
So, I did what everybody would do and sunk $38K into a carpet cleaning franchise. I paid $2,700 with an ad agent to “blanket” the area with really professional advertising. The pictures were much more professional then all the other idiots… plus I had a nice looking uniform, the decals on my van looked better than everyone elses… and most importantly, I calculated the sq footage of each room on my brand new $365 HP iPaq instead of a pad of paper.
Two days after the ad hit, I knew for an absolute fact that my life was over. 5 phone calls and 2 carpet cleaning jobs and the phones stopped ringing.
I had bet my entire professional stack of chips on this thing and sat there in the 10×10 bedroom in my rented basement apartment with my wife and two kids playing in the front room… staring down a list of dentist offices I was supposed to cold call for carpet cleaning bids… and just totally died emotionally.
No joke, I was up on that ropes course with absolutely no way of ever getting down. I remember distinctly saying to myself… How did you do this? How did this happen? I love my wife and kids so much, I’m a nice guy, I take care of people, I love people, and despite all of that my life’s over. My wife’s never going to have a nice home, my kids are never going to be able to have any opportunities to go to camps or play sports, or have memories going on trips… it was emotional death.
And then… I got a job stocking shelves and being the night clerk at a grocery store so we could eat. I eventually found a guy who’d already been starving as a carpet cleaner for 10 years and for someone reason kind of like it… so I hired him to do the jobs for me… and eventually I got a job at Fidelity Investments… and I didn’t die.
That was my “how low is low” moment. I was completely dead inside for two weeks and yet, it didn’t kill me. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but it didn’t kill me. And it has given me the “thick face black heart” necessary to see entrepreneurialism for what it is.
Thanks for the format and the content Perry. Looking forward to the call tonight.
Nick
AWESOME story, Nick. A signature story, actually!
Great Story Perry. I love how you tell a fantastic story which always has some fundamental lesson on entrepreneurship.
One question though.
How come your emails are not formatted to a specific character length anymore?
It makes the reading harder when they take up the whole width of the email.
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin,
I don’t do fixed-width because so many people read them on smart phones and it creates totally unpredictable formatting problems if I insert carriage returns. Sorry!
Perry
Ok I see now.
Didn’t even think of that. I’ll keep that in mind for myself.
Regardless, I still love your stories and find a lot of inspiration in them.
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin