Today Kevin Thompson, a long-time customer from the Pacific Northwest, posted a very gracious thank-you to me on my blog.

Not all the comments on this blog post are positive; some are sad and even poignant stories of business struggles and defeats, mixed in with some fantastic success stories.

I need to tell you about Kevin. Kevin is a very successful serial entrepreneur that’s sold everything from carpet cleaning to “How to get mold out of your house” to business advice for stay-at-home-moms.

Kevin was THE very first buyer of my Definitive Guide to Google AdWords in May 2003 at a Matt Furey seminar in Tampa.

I posted a very instructive reply, which is a story about Kevin. This contains some of the best advice I could possibly give anyone. Here’s what I said:

Kevin, let me tell you a story I bet you’ve never heard before.

I was in a Dan Kennedy meeting someplace – VIP group maybe, or it could have been a seminar – and somebody who’s a niche guru says, “I’ve got this ONE guy who does EVERYTHING I tell him to do. Everything. He’s an implementation machine. Nobody else does everything I tell ‘em to do, just Kevin.”

Somebody says, “You mean Kevin Thompson?”

“Yeah, Kevin Thompson.”

The guy says, “Well Kevin Thompson is one of MY customers and he does everything *I* tell him to do too!”

And yes, you were in the front row at Furey’s seminar in Tampa, handing over your credit card, buying copy #1 of my Definitive Guide to Google AdWords in 2003, which wasn’t even finished yet. And…. you were one of the guys in MY customer list who did “everything.”

And look where you are now.

At our mastermind meeting, Dan replies wryly: “If all of us sold our info products just to people who actually do everything we tell them to do, we’d all only have one customer, and it would be Kevin Thompson.”

Dude, you gotta give yourself a pat on the back for that and you’ve gotta take a look at all the other comments on this page. Not all of ‘em are positive.

There are no guarantees in life and some people don’t get the success they so crave. I know that. Boy, do I ever know that. I have a front row seat to all of it. But all I can do is my job.

It’s like Les Brown says: “It’s better to be prepared and not have an opportunity, than have an opportunity and not be prepared.”

I find a startlingly consistent correlation between LISTENING TO A VERY SMALL GROUP OF MENTORS, PREFERABLY JUST ONE > MASSIVE, ALMOST RECKLESS IMPLEMENTATION > EVENTUAL SUCCESS. Not 100% mind you, but enough that I can usually identify why someone hasn’t succeeded. It’s seldom all that hard.

The most typical person who’s spent $50,000 going into debt and getting educated by online gurus and has nothing to show for it is on 22 different email lists and has products from 14 different people, most of which have only been acted upon 25% and not in any comprehensive systematic way. It’s spotty and shotgun with a trail of unfinished projects.

You are an exception and I know exactly why.

So buy yourself a nice lunch today and celebrate being who you are.

It’s great to know ya. See you soon I hope, let’s grab a beer.

Perry

Dear Reader, if you earnestly seek success then I encourage you to read my entire blog post and ALL the comments. And once again, a congratulations goes to Kevin Thompson for being a DOER.

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.