Mel,
Quick note before today's story: our Who Knows Planet Perry Best? trivia contest starts today. The first 5 questions are live right now, and 5 more drop every day through Friday.
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Now, back to 2001...
~
When I pulled the rip cord, quit my job and struck out on my own, our finances were perilously tight.
We were in debt to the tune of one year's income, paying a LOT of interest. We had gotten a 2nd mortgage to consolidate our bills a year before.
Our house had an in-law apartment which fetched a few hundred bucks rent, which made it possible for us to afford a mortgage in the first place.
3 kids 4 and under. Two in diapers.
4 years before, I had been fired from my mfr's rep job which had been 2 years of baked potatoes and salsa.
I had cult-deprogrammed myself from MLM.... And in so doing acquired a great deal of insight into how marketing and human beings actually operate.
My current gig had been my first job that actually 'worked'. I had become "The Go To Guy" in the company – best illustrated by something Jim, one of our sales guys said to me.
It was 7pm one night. He and I were working late, the only dudes in the office. Jim said, "Perry, do you realize this whole company revolves around you?"
A conservative Nebraska "don't get too big for your britches" impulse zinged through my head. His remark instantly struck me as ego-stroking. I recoiled.
"Now Perry... seriously. Every time I need to know something, you're the guy who knows the answer. A detail about a certain customer. The history of some email exchange. Which product to recommend for a situation. When the Goldmine database gets corrupted, you're the one that reindexes the files and fixes it.
"The receptionist doesn't know all that. The COO doesn't know all that. The owner of the company doesn't know that.
"Who invented DeviceNet boot camp? You did. Who went out and recruited every single one of our reps and distributors and knows all their names and which accounts they're selling to? You do. Who wrote all those white papers and magazine articles?
You.
"Perry, this whole company revolves around.... YOU!"
Dang. He's right.
I was the 29-year-old punk driving around in a rusty Toyota with 213,000 miles with a STANFORD bumper sticker on the back window from the previous owner, desperately hoping to get some kind of respect, to be taken seriously, to not be dismissed as just another ignorant 20-something nerd engineer who doesn't know how to sell anything.
I had not yet learned when or how to put my cojones in a wheel barrow and assert my authority.
Every month when it was time to turn in my magazine articles and get paid for them, it was a dogfight because the guy never quite adhered to our original $500 agreement and would arbitrarily say "Yeah, well that article isn't really worth $500.... I'll pay you $350."
I always knew the next person I had to talk to after my negotiation with El Presidente was my wife, who was shuffling bills trying to pay the mortgage.
Much as I hated it, THAT was my first serious "Learning how to ask for money" school. After I developed some callouses, I started to be good at it.
I got really good at buying used $2K Toyotas with high miles and driving them another 80,000 miles.
I was also good at wrapping exhaust pipes with muffler tape.
And when you're "That guy" you don't have much room to negotiate. You get pushed around a lot.
I knew stock option money was coming in the next few months, so if I could manage to make ends meet for the moment, I would get some more runway.
I knew that I knew that I knew a few things.
I knew that 1 page of advertising in our industry's trade magazines cost $3K to $6K.
I knew I could write a really good 2-4 page magazine article for a client, with their byline, and get it published in one of those trade magazines, AT WILL.
Because I knew the editors, they knew I was a good writer, and I met deadlines.
So my client could get $6K to $12K worth of media exposure – but only needed to pay me say $1K or $2K.
I knew editorial press exposure is more credible than advertising.
I knew how to generate leads from those articles. I knew how to generate leads on the web.
I knew my own tiny niche. And all the various players.
Deep down I knew I was a "go to guy" and there aren't many of those.
So somehow... this ought to have a fighting chance.
Yesterday I mentioned my friend telling me to write a business plan.
At some level I knew most business plans are BS. You have no idea what's going to come up. It's mostly fiction.
But the list of ways I could make money written on the back of my business card in my back pocket was real.
I knew a lot of people who could help me think through situations and offer good ways to solve problems. I already had an informal mastermind group in place – which is exactly where I got the advice to "Take the money and RUN RUN RUN."
(Some of the best advice I've ever gotten from anybody.)
And my wife knew somehow, through her woman's intuition, NOW was the time to make the leap.
Dear reader, you may be 30 years old like I was then. Or you may be decades older than I am now.
You may be young and inexperienced. Or you may have decades more wisdom, experience, resources and street cred than I EVER had.
But either way –
WE ARE ALL REINVENTING OURSELVES RIGHT NOW.
EVERYTHING is in flux.
It's R E A L L Y easy to remember those times with nostalgia and NOT remember how terrified I was at the time.
There was NO guarantee whatsoever that it was all going to work out.
None.
The other night I headed over to the Riverside City Library. It's a lovely building on a riverfront. I hadn't been there in a long time.
I sat down at a desk there, which brought a flashback from that exact time in 2001, two weeks after I'd quit my job.
At that exact same desk 25 years ago, I had sat there biting my fingernails, hoping to land my very first paying client. Because when I quit my job, a TINY little ripple echoed through my professional network. "Hey, Perry left Synergetic!"
I received a very finite number of phone calls of possible job offers. "Hey, why don't you come in for an interview." Just a very few.
One company flew me down to Arkansas. I said, "How about instead of an employment situation, we do a 2 month project." I pitched them on a 60-day $15K project with a list of deliverables. I knew I could make ends meet on $7500/month.
I remember coming back from Arkansas, sitting in that library hoping they would say yes, and just WAITING for their answer. I had done everything I could.
So, the other night at the same library sitting at the same desk, I couldn't help but notice how similar NOW feels to THEN.
9/11 then; war in the Middle East now.
Internet then; AI now.
Little kids depending on me then; big kids depending on me now.
Times of great uncertainty then; times of great uncertainty now.
Times of great opportunity then; times of great opportunity now.
I have great affection for the young man that I was, trying to make my way in the world; I'm proud of that young man for punching through his fear, resistance, insecurity and headtrash and driving forward.
I have great affection for ALL entrepreneurs trying to make their way in the world; I'm so proud of so many in Planet Perry who have overcome immense obstacles... and who believe that wisdom is always available to those who ask for it.
That's why I close most of my emails with "Seize the Day."
Today only comes once.
The perils are obvious. The real opportunities are not.
Yet they are always lurking in there. They are always present.
There is ALWAYS a need, a customer, a yearning, a bleeding neck, an ache.
For every problem known to man there is a solution known to God.
I'm not sure I've ever told the story of how that first client turned out.
Watch your email box tomorrow for Part 3.
And seize the day,
Perry Marshall
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