Mel,
A guy paid upfront for a year of Roundtable and showed up at our January meeting.
He was running a fast-growing business. He had sparked a mini-movement. It was HOT. Men from all over the world were coming to his events.
At dinner we fell into a feverish, intense conversation. He told me his mercurial entrepreneur story.
He said:
“I had a mortgage, real estate and insurance operation. For the first time in my life I was doing reasonably well.
Then Lehman Bros shut down and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis struck like a thunderbolt.
The problem wasn’t just the financial crisis.
I didn’t understand markets. I didn’t understand trends. I didn’t understand preserving capital or how to build a durable company.
When rates changed and banks stopped lending, the only business world I knew evaporated.
All the debt was in my name.
I came within one signature of something that could have sent me to prison for ten years.
I turned to alcohol. Drugs. Pills.
I had an affair. My wife was pregnant with our 2nd daughter, and she was deeply angry with me.
I started running marathons and ultramarathons. It was an escape. My wife told me I was literally running away from my problems.
I have no money. I have no network. I have no nothing.
But out there running, I started experiencing stillness.
I started asking spiritual questions. Those questions eventually led me out of a prison I’d been trapped in.
Later, I stood up at an event and told people the truth.
I had lost everything. I had almost no money left. I was fighting a pill addiction. I had cheated on my wife.
I began to confess my entire ugly reality.
That became work I would later do with men.
“And Perry, I would lay in my bed staring at my ceiling in a cold panic and listen to your Renaissance Club mp3s. You were talking people through their problems and dispensing doses of encouragement.
“Somehow that gave me strength.
“You and I have never met before today, and you didn’t know it, but you helped me through the most excruciating spot I’ve ever been through in my life.
“I simply came here today to express my gratitude. If this was the only conversation we ever had, it would be worth the travel and expense just to say Thank You.”
Dear reader, an entrepreneur can’t go to the church potluck and complain about your $600,000 tax bill.
And you can’t tell ‘em about your affair, your pill addiction, or how close you came to going to jail for 10 years.
The entrepreneur road can be a lonely one.
But we’re only as sick as our secrets. And the truth will set you free.
Perry Marshall
