Mel,
Round 2 of our Who Knows Planet Perry Best? trivia contest is live. 5 new questions dropped today, with 5 more coming Thursday and Friday.
The top 10 scorers win a free month of RenAI. We'll announce the winners next Monday.
The link to today's questions is at the bottom of this email. Now, back to the basement office...
~
Yesterday I told you how quitting my job pressed me to the outer limits of my comfort zone.
Post 9/11, planes not flying, business and travel frozen.
But there was a happy side.
For the first time EVER in my life, I had space to think, focus and create.
At the job I'd just left, the only way to get 'open space' was to come in early or stay late. Otherwise, incessant interruptions. Phone calls, staff members, bosses, meetings, emergencies.
Laura helped me set up a little office in our basement. Across from the washer and dryer. A table, a chair, a computer and a stereo.
I could roll out of bed and be 'in the saddle' a minute later.
We had a glass brick window in the corner and the sun shone in every morning.
My phone was NOT ringing every 10 minutes. A crisis was not threatening every hour of the day.
I remember playing the classical music station and developing my "what I can do to make money" list I'd written on the back of a business card.
I needed clients. I reminded myself: "You're selling money at a discount."
First client was a software company in Arkansas. Just before I left, Laura said, "You need new clothes. You gotta look the part." She took me to the mall.
After 5 minutes at JCPenney, no sales person showed up so she made a beeline for Nordstrom.
I gulped. I would not DREAM of buying anything at Nordstrom.
But Laura knew I would look right.
She told the salesman I had a client visit and he knew exactly what to do.
$1200 later I was the owner of slacks, a black mock turtleneck and a fancy sport jacket.
(Nordstrom was light years outside my Nebraska Engineer comfort zone.... but I secretly liked looking handsome. Laura ALWAYS got me things I would never ever buy for myself.)
I go to Arkansas. I pepper the CEO with questions all morning.
I wasn't used to stepping into new marketing situations every single day. I didn't think as fast as I do now. But mid-afternoon, it all snapped in place.
I asked:
"How much does it cost you to get a new customer?"
"Fifty thousand dollars if you include airplane tickets and airports and the value of my time."
"What if I had a magic gumball machine that gave you new customers for $15K instead of $50K?"
"That would be amazing."
"Let's do a 2 month $15K project and I'll slash your cost to get a new customer to $15K instead of 50K."
He agreed. Suddenly I was paying my bills.
And... the Magic Gumball Machine became Question Numero Uno of my consulting career.
But a few weeks later, the client moved the goal posts.
"My product was on the cover of Control Engineering Magazine in 1990. Perry, I want THAT."
"Dude, I can't get you on the cover of any magazine. I never promised that. I promised to drop your new customer cost from $50K to $15K."
But he had lost interest in that and seemed increasingly annoyed at my constant questions. He was irritated that his software wasn't going to be on a magazine cover. (It didn't have a snowball's chance.)
I delivered everything I promised. Including a very nice article published in a magazine.
I don't think he used a bit of it.
(The bane of the consultant's life. Sometimes you work out how to save their entire company, then you watch them burn the whole thing to the ground anyway. Just happened again a few months ago.
In fact... my son Caden is 26 and he had his very first consulting gig a month ago. Flew to the east coast and spent three days with a client.
Not only was the client resistant to his advice... the guy was downright offended.
At dinner I smiled at Caden. "Congratulations! You now know that you don't have the power to MAKE a client do ANYTHING!!!" Our Kindred Spirit Factor spiked.)
I hustled. Picked up other projects and clients. $1000 here, $1500 there.
I registered www.perrymarshall.com. I spent hours at Buzz Cafe writing the script for "Guerrilla Marketing for Hi Tech Sales People." It became a tape and audio CD.
In it I said, "People are struggling because they're obsessing about techniques and ignoring principles." I promised that everything I described was a principle not a technique and therefore wouldn't go out of date.
95% of what I said in "Guerrilla Marketing" is still true. If you were to listen today you'd say that stuff is "obvious." Yep, it's obvious now because the whole world steered in that direction. It wasn't obvious then. It was revolutionary.
Most books and courses I've created have been "True forever, but only bloody obvious 10 years later."
We have LOTS of clients like that. And one of the things I love most in the world is:
ENDURING ART.
Boy George – fashionable for a brief window in the 1980s, then embarrassingly dated – I'm not interested in that. At all.
Bach, Shostakovich, Miles Davis – enduring for decades or centuries – I'm SUPER interested.
The only way to produce enduring art is to immerse yourself in enduring art. You make it a part of you. It becomes as natural as breathing.
Ten years before 2001 I had signed up in Amway. Everyone's heard my Amway tales of woe.
A 7-year detour. But my motivation for doing that was good. I deeply craved, at age 21, the space and freedom to create a world that I could be proud of.
A world that somebody else couldn't destroy on a whim.
I wanted to make enduring art. Lasting discoveries.
Then 25 years ago this week, I finally got my shot.
Dear Reader, I don't know what your life is like today or this week or this year.
If you're like most people I know, you're reinventing yourself. RIGHT. NOW.
And it's uncomfortable. (No matter how smoothly or not smoothly it's going.)
This is your chance.
TAKE IT.
The more important it is... the more it matters... the more resistance you're gonna feel.
If you think that somehow the stars are going to magically align and everything is just going to 'fall in place'.... you're living in a fantasy land.
Today is not coming back.
Be immensely grateful for whatever you have. And for everything you lack, seek wisdom.
Seek wisdom.
Those who seek will find.
SEEK.
Perry Marshall
