Wayne Moritz, a software engineer from Clearwater Florida, posted this comment on my blog. I think it’s a gem:

What Perry teaches is a rapidly evolving process and if you want to play there you have to pay your dues in an ongoing basis. What you master today may be the cold ticket next month.

I have been in the software business since the mid 70’s and i work 3000-4000 hours per year to be tops in my game. I can go anywhere and name my deal. My friends when they lose their job will never find another one because the feeling of entitlement or having already paid their dues years ago is stuck in their heads. They are like an athlete that makes the team and stops working out once the contract is signed. What they don’t realize is the job just got started once you make the team.

I could easily pluck their 90k government jobs and replace them with a 30k person as the skills vs what they do are no longer worth 90k plus benefits and they add zero value beyond showing up and pushing buttons. These guys have not picked up a book or improved their skills unless the employer has paid for it. They have wasted endless weeknights and weekends watching last place teams play sports though. They do sometimes ask me to give them shortcuts because they don’t want to do the work.

I picked up Perry’s Google Adwords, other courses, news letters and more a few years ago and yes they piled up and sat here. I am not a web guy but an offline guy that solves complex business issues for multi-national corporations.

I had a new prospect call and need my help with ad-words and i thought now is the time. I wanted to learn it but now i had a paying client letting me loose on their dime. I went to work probably 120 hours per week for 6 weeks, poured over Perry’s materials, bought analysis tools (looking inside competition) and kept at it until i had a working model that I felt great about. I took them live and and generated a profit from month 1. Now we are in our 4th month and they are generating 35-50k in monthly revenue and i get a piece of each deal as these are 1k-3k professional services transactions. We expect revenues to be 50-100k+ in 2012 per month as i introduce more landing pages and refine my selection process and negative keywords.

I am using all that i have learned for my own companies and others I choose to work with. I do filter down to ones where i can make at a minimum 2k+ per month or I don’t get involved. I have a list of companies wanting help and it’s funny as i know in minutes which ones will work and which ones i walk from. The minute they tell me they want page 1 Free Google I hit the door as these are the people that want something ongoing for nothing. They are doomed to failure long term because their greed far exceeds their common sense.

Too many people mix up Activity for Accomplishments. My friends are active but never accomplish anything because they show up, push the buttons and go home with their checks. They never take the time to learn or ask questions or improve themselves.

My point here is you need to do the work or hire a mentor that can help you which means it takes effort and money to make money. The guys that brought me in were not afraid to pay all the ad-words costs and pay me a percentage off the gross deposits in the bank each month. I was firm saying i have 36 years experience offline and i can move my drive and ambition online with the proper tools and training quickly.

Now everybody wins.

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.