Brick & Mortar Retailers Wanna Stick YOU With Sales Tax

The woman who traded a gorgeous home for an even better business

This summer, Trisha came to my 4-Man Intensive from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Long ago she rented a house for $350 per month.

In Chicago that would fetch you a tin shack under a bridge – but up there in the frozen tundra it grants you 3 bedrooms and a nice yard. Gotta love small town America!

Not fancy, but the place keeps ‘em warm when it’s 40 degrees below zero. She still lives in that house now.

She explained how a few years ago she was sorely tempted to buy a fabulous home, which would cost $1200 a month. (In Northern Michigan, $1200 a month buys you a LOT of house.) She almost did but then changed her mind.

Instead, Trisha started her business, which is now a thriving mail-order clothing company.

She said if she’d bought the bigger house, she wouldn’t have been able to fund her company.

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather own a cash-generating asset than a money-sucking liability. Homes don’t make you money while you sleep. They generate repair bills while you sleep.

A few weeks ago I blogged on “What kind of car should I buy?” I spoke of my deteriorating 10 year old Toyota Avalon. I asked everybody what they thought I should get.

Tons of opinions. Everything from “Hey dude, drive it into the ground if it turns your crank,” to “Treat yourself to a Ferrari.”

Last week I bought a 2007 Avalon. Premium sound system, 42,000 miles.

Nothing to brag about by any means; just a perfectly respectable, comfortable car that’ll do its job for the next 5 years. It plays nice tunes.

Compared to that, I spend extravagant sums of money on education. Last year alone I spent 50% more than the price of that car, just sharpening my mental saw.

In the Dilbert Cube I drove a 1984 Toyota Tercel station wagon that cost $1300 and had a leaky radiator. I told my boss I didn’t think you should spend more than a month’s income on a car. Meanwhile I was always buying newsletters and business books.

I have *always* done that. What I invest in education exceeds the cost of both our cars combined, at least by a factor of 2.

I STILL don’t think you should spend more than a month’s income on a car.

Age-old financial wisdom says:

-Save 10%
-Give 10%

To that, I add: Invest 10% in your own education, personal growth and development.

Most people think doing any of those things is impossible, let alone all three.

Let me remind you that millions of people go into debt to the tune of $100,000+ for a college education. Some acquire no marketable skills and spend decades paying it off.

Six months volunteering for Greenpeace? Impossible, gotta pay those student loans. Start a business and eat baloney sandwiches for 2 years? Impossible, gotta get a J-O-B and make payments.

That’s slavery.

Nothing in business is more bankable than the ability to get and keep customers. Invest in that.

There’s no liberation like knowledge, wisdom and marketable skills. The compound interest you earn over five or ten years of aggressively investing in yourself is INCALCULABLE.

“Take my instruction and not silver,
And knowledge rather than choicest gold.
For wisdom is better than jewels;
And all desirable things cannot compare with her.”
-Solomon, 1000 BC

Perry Marshall

My Chinese Adoption, The Great Wall, & Perry goes to Hong Kong

In December I’m stickin’ my four kids on an airplane and Laura and I are going to China to adopt a little girl.

We’ve been bangin’ away at this adoption for almost 5 years, now and it’s finally about to happen.

Actually the story goes back about 20 years. We’re listening to some program on the radio and they’re talking about foster care and adoption and Laura says, “I want to do that.”

I’m like, “You want to do WHAT???”

Sounded like torture to me. Especially foster care. You fall in love with some kid after awhile, then the government sends him off to some other family. As for adoption, dang. Talk about reaching into the box of chocolates and having NO IDEA what you’re gonna get.

I’m a nice guy and all, but none of this sounded like any fun to me.

But then I got into Laura’s autoresponder sequence. Drip drip drip. Chinese water torture begins to wear away the stone.

It started with our next door neighbors who had three foster kids. Paul started wearing me down, ‘cuz they were all messed up when he got ‘em but he and his wife started lovin’ on them and I’m like, “Hey, these are some pretty nice kids.”

A year later we took in a foster daughter. An infant, her name was Drea. We kept her for three months, then her grandmother took her in.

2 weeks later her grandma contacted us through the social worker and asked if we’d be her God parents. Drea is 13 now and we see her every week.

And yeah, about 5 years ago we decided to crank up the adoption machine. I visited Bryan Todd in China 3 times and I love China and we decided to add a Chinese girl to the four we already had.

Zoe is 16 months old. She was found abandoned in a park. One of her legs is shorter than the other and she’s got 2 toes on one foot. Other than that she’s fine. She’s officially our daughter now, they just haven’t given us permission to go get her yet.

(Caring for kids is Laura’s calling in life, and the waiting drives her crazy.)

Sometime in the next couple of months we’re going to get the thumbs up. Probably in December it’s gonna happen.

I haven’t been to Asia in 7 years and I gotta pay for all these plane tickets so all my kids can see the Great Wall of China. Plus I’ve got to put together what they describe as a “Cash donation to the Chinese government” to, uh, facilitate things.

So I’m hosting a 4-Man Intensive in Hong Kong. (I’m also offering four observer seats for half price. Observers can participate, they just don’t get a half-day hot seat.) A totally unique, private 8-person workshop in Asia.

I don’t get to Asia much. My last visit there was in 2004. I have no idea when I’ll get there again. So if you wanna make fast improvements to your biz, and you don’t want to fly to Chicago to do it, this is your chance.

This is a chance for people in Singapore, Thailand, Australia, China, India, New Zealand, Japan – anywhere in the Pacific rim – to get a serious dose of Planet Perry.

The only caveat is I don’t know exactly when I’m coming to Hong Kong. Most likely December. I’ll probably get about 3 weeks notice. If you can work with that, then click here. If you want an observer seat instead, just mention it on your application.

We’ll let you know just as soon as we have a date, and in 2 days we’ll add new jet fuel to your business.

One last thing. I’ve gotta make a confession about this adoption: For awhile it scared me to death.

Here’s the story of how I calmed myself down and got OK with it. It’s from my Spirituality email series:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/highlighter-2/

As I said to a friend yesterday, “We’re about to enter a whole new screen in the video game of life.” So this is a shout-out to all those who’ve adopted, done foster care, or done anything for the abandoned little ones in the world: Blessings to ya.

Perry Marshall

P.S.: You can go here to read Laura’s adoption blog and subscribe to her updates on Twitter.

The United States Budget, Plain English

United States Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

Now, remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget.

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385

Sort brings the issue “home” doesn’t it?

(I’m not sure who first wrote this, but thanks to Richard Lewis of Wells Fargo Advisors in Racine Wisconsin for passing it along.)

Example of a Star Student & The Best Business Advice You Could Possibly Get

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.

My Dilbert Cube Escape Story – And Yours

It was a beautiful Indian summer morning here on September 11 when Al Qaeda decimated the World Trade Center in New York City – and the entire world was plunged into chaos. I remember where I was, you remember where you were.

What I remember is going outside during those next few days (I lived halfway between Midway and O’Hare airports in Chicago), and seeing and hearing no airplanes in the sky. The silence was eerie…

The eerie feeling didn’t go away. The phones stopped ringing at work (I was in charge of inside sales) it was as though the entire industrial market had just stopped cold. Sales dropped precipitously. Also, at that very moment we were in the quiet period that precedes a company buyout that had been many months in the making.

An agreement had already been reached between Synergetic’s investors and Lantronix Inc. to buy us out. They were going to give me my stock options and as of October 18th, 2001, I would have a new employer, if I accepted their job offer. I could stay along with the new company, I just needed to agree to keep some of those options tied up for awhile.

That looked very, very attractive, considering the silent Chicago air space and the silent phones. Quit my job in the midst of that kind of uncertainty? You’d have to be crazy to walk away from a good job in such circumstances. That’s what my co-workers told me.

But my wife, Laura (thank God for her) had different ideas. Laura said, “Perry, if you’ve ever had a chance to strike out on your own, this is IT. I think you should bail.”

…She had more confidence in me than I did. Still, I needed a sanity check, some additional confirmation. So I went to a mastermind group I’d had the foresight to form 2 years earlier – I’d formed it before I really “needed” one.

The members of my group saw things much, much differently than my co-workers did.

One Guy – John LaTourette, whose nickname in Martial Arts is “Quick Kill” – wrote me this note:

One gal – Suzy Seay, a financial planner, said, “Perry, you’re so gifted, you have so much to offer the world. The fact that “most folks aren’t risking new ventures right now” means there is great opportunity out there. It’s not as risky as you think – but you won’t be able to see it clearly until you take the leap.”

To a person – with absolute unanimity – they said,

“Perry, take the money and RUN, RUN, RUN.
Get OUT and GET OUT RIGHT NOW.”

Let me tell you what happened next…

I told my boss I was not going to accept the job. He tried to talk me into staying, but I held firm. He then became very stern and informed me that I was to immediately clean out my desk and leave the premises.

He appointed someone to watch me clean out the desk, to make sure I didn’t steal anything (!) and I was ushered to the door. Just before I walked out onto the parking lot, my boss’s wife Gaye gave me a little hug and wished me well. I felt glowering eyes on my back as I walked out.

I got in my car and as I drove out, took pause to notice “My job in my rear view mirror for the last time.” The phones at work hadn’t been ringing, but my home phone started ringing.

People in my industry, who had always known me as “the Synergetic guy” wanted to know what was up. They would say, “Well I wanted to let you know we’ve got a position opening up and I wanted to see if you’d like to interview for it?”

It was going to take awhile before those stock options came through, and money would be tight for awhile, but I said, “My back isn’t against the wall and I’m keeping my options open. Rather than getting into an employment situation, why don’t we work on a project together and get to know each other?”

I converted job offers into part-time consulting assignments.

Replaced my income in 19 days!

Joy.

Elation.

A Certain Serenity, A Feeling Of Having Crossed A Huge Chasm.

After 11 Years Of Bitter Struggle, The Realization Of A Dream.

I can’t begin to tell you how exhilarating, how quietly energizing it felt to know I’d finally escaped the rat race. It was almost surreal to wake up at seven thirty or eight or eight-thirty or nine in the morning, and instead of slogging through 18 miles of traffic, to go downstairs to my musty little basement office (with the washer and dryer puttering away in the corner) and know that I was in business for myself, after all those years of sweat and anticipation and mostly disappointment.

To turn on Mozart (or Marillion) and work on marketing projects uninterrupted for hours at a time, to see the sunlight streaming through the window instead of buzzing fluorescent lights. Unafraid that my phone-extension was going to ring and I was going to get summoned to someone’s office to get interrogated about something or some rumor that was floating around.

And the last 10 years has been a dream.

I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.

But today – can you tell me YOUR Dilbert Cube escape story?

Has Planet Perry helped you earn YOUR freedom?

I wanna hear about it……. post your comments below.

Farmer Ron, the Big Bailout, and the 80/20 Rule

I first wrote this right after the economy crashed in ’08. Thought it was worthy of a second go-round.

My father-in-law, Ron, is a 77 year old retired farmer in Southeastern Nebraska. He wears a John Deere hat, sports a farmer’s suntan and talks kinda slow.

He had this to say about the Big Bailout:

“The people that stole my cow now want me to feed it. I resent that a lot, but I do not want my cow to die.  So I guess we will have to send more cow feed their way. In the good ole days, we could have hung a couple of the rustlers and that would have delayed the next raid by awhile. Now they expect to get rewarded.”

Gotta love that simple farmer common sense.

Gotta love the fact that he’s from Nebraska. (Just like me.)

I’d like to add a few comments of my own.

First, the contrast between the mainstream news media and the entrepreneurial culture online couldn’t possibly be more striking.

Journalists, as a group, are the most financially threatened population in today’s economy.

Not because of the banking crisis, but because the Internet is destroying their business. They’re ALL scared. Radio, newspaper, TV reporters – all of them.

THAT is the lens they see the world in to begin with. The grim reaper is pounding at their door and this colors EVERYTHING they say.

Those reporters who are able to perceive opportunity have already abandoned ship to seize it.  The ones still reporting are the ones who are still hanging on. Can you hear the water seeping in? Glug-Glug-Glug…

Not only are they paranoid, they are irresponsible and lazy. One time Ken McCarthy said, “Reporters don’t report, they repeat. They don’t investigate, they elaborate.”

You CANNOT trust these people to tell you what is really going on.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs are unanimous in their resolution to gain ground during this next season. Yes, we clearly understand we may witness all manner of turmoil.

But we know that many, many assets will be undervalued, that average thinkers will cut back on marketing and advertising and customer acquisition, that people whose stocks have gone down will do the stupidest thing possible and SELL them in fear of further loss.

Their loss is our gain.

All you have to do is read the emails and watch the videos that are coming out in droves from those of us who are on the front lines working with top performers. I spent last weekend with 65 other entrepreneurs at my Chicago seminar and the atmosphere in the room was powerfully upbeat, even effusive.

I fully understand how easy it is to see the good news as a masquerade and the disaster as being fully real.  But as far as I’m concerned, the bottom line reality is still this:

1. Crisis ALWAYS creates opportunity. Always. “The time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.”

2.  It’s like that old story about the two guys being chased by the bear. One says to the other, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”

Let’s talk about #2 for awhile.

It sounds so terribly vulture-ish to say that, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it sound so… exploitive? So mercenary?

Oh yes, it most certainly does.

But it’s still true.

One of my other favorite truths:

“In the land of the blind, the man with one eye gets to be king.”

Just about every market I’ve ever seen is a land of the blind. All but the most ferociously competitive niches, anyway.  I’d be hard pressed to look at any business in any industry and not be able to find, within 15 minutes, significant holes in their marketing strategy.

If you’ve got holes, baby, this is the time to patch ‘em.

Cuz here’s the deal:

Your market is the land of the blind, and… it might just constrict. (Or it might not. But it might.)

If it does, some vendors will go under.

Your job is to make sure it’s somebody else, not you.

80/20 Rule says:

20% of the businesses get 80% of the business.

That means the members of the 20% make 16X as much money as the members of the 80%. And it also means, if the water level rises, it’s the 80% who drown first. The 20% drown last.

The 20% seldom ever drown.

They plug their leaks, they tighten their ship, they whip their crew into shape. They prepare for the long winter and they get busy. They still drink and sing Irish folk songs at their crazy parties and they still have a good time. They enjoy their good time with resolve and determination.

For a long time we’ve had 5% unemployment. That means 95% employment. That means 95% of people who want a job, have one. Less unemployment than that surely requires some kind of exception to the laws of the universe!

That means of the bottom 80% – the mediocre people who have no inspiration and little sense of responsibility and can’t follow instructions – only 5% of THOSE are unable to find work.

A 5% unemployment is therefore a virtual violation of the 80/20 rule. A merciful one, but nonetheless a violation. Ah, the luxuries of a society that values equality.

Now…. let’s say the unemployment rate rises to 10% or 15%.

You know what that means?

It means you can fire any deadbeat you want and you’ll be able to almost instantly replace him with a savvy, competent, responsible, hungry person who can follow instructions and genuinely contribute to your bottom line.

If you have the guts to do that, you will pull out ahead in the race.

It means if you have any cash at all you can buy investments at record-low prices and rake it in big time when the market comes back.

Let’s see, a few other implications of the 80/20 rule….

80/20 applies to nearly everything you could possibly measure. It’s not merely a business abstraction, it’s a law of nature. Which means:

80% of the bad debt comes from 20% of the loans. (That’s the part they’re selling to the US government. Wall Street guys generally understand 80/20 stuff.)

80% of the corruption comes from 20% of the politicians.

80% of the pork is found in 20% of the legislation.

80% of the bills in Congress are written by 20% of the lobbyists.

Now here’s something else I know:

80% of the people on my email list will only effect 20% of the change that they need to make happen.

20% of the people on my email list will effect 80% of the change that is going to happen.

Yes, a small number of those within the sound of my voice will make huge strides in the next weeks and months.

In accordance with these principles, I am only sending this email to the top 20% of my list. The most responsive, the most proactive, those most devoted to their own education.

I am ignoring the other 80%. They don’t really deserve to read this message.

You do.

(That’s awfully elitist of me, isn’t it?)

It’s because I’m narrowing my focus. YES I will still be ruthless about acquiring new customers and selling with every tool in the arsenal.

I will be providing extreme value to those who have done business with me in the past and who have already shown, by their actions and their educational investment, that they are committed to staying ahead of the curve.  The information you get from me in the coming months will be the best ever.

One more thing:

There is a top 20%.

There is also the top 20% of the top 20% – the 4%.

There is the top 20% of the top 20% of the top 20% – the 0.8%.

What you should really aspire to is to be a top 0.8% person.

Let’s compare the 0.8% person to the 80% person:

-Every move he makes is carefully chosen because his time is 16X as valuable

-He understands that of all the things on his list of 37 things to do, 4 or 5 of them are more important than all the others put together. The 80 percenter acts as though all items are equally important

-He is profoundly selective about the information he reads, listens to and acts upon; the 80 percenter is ‘open minded’ about almost everything

-He belongs to some kind of ‘good ol boys club’ – which is ’80 percenter’ lingo for a trusted circle of people among whom there is nearly zero transaction cost. Every successful business person I know has one; 80 percenters don’t have good ol’ boys clubs, they just gossip and have bitch sessions

-He doesn’t care what most people think, and knows that more often than not the masses are tragically wrong; the 80 percenter IS the masses.

Consider yourself privileged for having received this email.  Something you did qualified you to get it. And don’t let grass grow under your feet. Survey your customers, find out what they’d like more of than what they’re getting from you now, and sell it to them.

Don’t be the slow guy. Be the guy who outruns him.

Carpe Diem – Seize the Day.  Make sure the bear seizes someone else.

Perry Marshall

Standards. It’s time to raise ‘em. Here’s why.

You might not be in manufacturing, but no matter what you do, you’re still in the business of changing something or someone.

And whether you process plastic pellets or sell exotic travel packages, the following is always true:

If you set no standards for your raw material, you can make no promises about your finished product.

A girl that sleeps with anything in jeans gets no respect. A college that accepts just anyone can never become a Harvard or MIT. And a company that has no intake requirements can make no results guarantees.

This is why all my best programs have admission requirements:

• You can’t get into Bobsled Run unless you’re spending a bare minimum of $500/month on AdWords.
• You can’t go to Maui unless you’re spending $5K a month on advertising, preferably online.
• You can’t join Roundtable unless your sales are at least in the low to mid six figures.
• You can’t come to a 4-Man Intensive if you’re a rank beginner.

Why?

Initially it was simply because I prefer working with estudiantes who know what they’re doing. Roundtable is a total blast because everyone has hard-core, in-the-trenches business experience and the smell of battle on ‘em.

We’ve found that if when we make stipulations about the raw material, our students get much more consistent results and bigger success stories. We weed out the whiners in advance. Everyone’s happier.

I mentioned this to one guru and I watched the gears grinding in his head when I told him that we turn away 25-30% of our applicants. He couldn’t imagine that we’d just walk away from that money. But you can’t attract money or people, if you’re not willing to repel money and people.

The other day John Mendocha pointed out that I’m very nearly the only Internet guru who does this. I said, “Dang, you’re right. Never realized that before.”

I just wouldn’t have it any other way. Look, if you come to an event or join a coaching group, do you want to figure out 2 hours after you arrived that you’re the smartest guy in the room? I don’t think so.

Even our Mastermind Online Forum – whose only entrance requirement is the $99/month – is filled with such high quality people, I dare say it’s the best forum in the world of its kind. MM club members post questions and get extremely qualified answers, often only minutes later.

I LOVE my culture of high performers. I love the fact that an achievement in Planet Perry really does mean something. I love being surrounded by sharp people who love to contribute and who deserve to be heard.

I love the iron-sharpens-iron nature of people who truly want to improve their game.

YOUR customers will love that too.

Raise your standards. Be willing to turn away those you really can’t help, those who really don’t qualify.

Figure out who you know you can help and select THEM.

Those customers will be more expensive to acquire but I promise you, in the long run, you’ll have a much happier and prosperous following.

Perry Marshall

Tom Hoobyar: Farewell to a Friend

I’m sad to report, my dear friend, mentor and father figure Tom Hoobyar passed from our midst this past Sunday, 71 years young.

Tom and I first met at a Gary Halbert seminar ten years ago. If you’ve never been to a Halbert seminar, it’s kind of like a Dan Kennedy seminar except everyone is on LSD.

Not literally, mind you, but figuratively. Gary attracted a wooly, wild, creative bunch and that event was no exception. Halbert fans were advertising astronauts.

Tom was a CEO of a hi-tech company, hoping to parachute out someday. I’d just parachuted out of a hi-tech company so he was naturally interested. Tom and I stayed up and talked into the wee hours of the morning.

Later, we were in a coaching group together and we’d always split a hotel room. We’d stay up till 3am, solving the world’s problems. Talking about marketing and humanity and religion and quantum physics and whatever other strange thing we happened to be reading about lately.

We would sometimes have convos about Tom doing something outside of his company. Tom was fiercely loyal to his firm, with a paternal responsibility to focus his full energies to the company which he had founded. He felt having an outside business would be a diversion, and his protective sense of care for the employees and direction kept him focused.

One day out of the blue the top shareholder decided to throw him out. It’s not clear to me why, but that’s what he did. Tom was one of the founders and he’d had a successful run, but such things happen as you know.

So now he was out on his own, with an urgent need to become a renegade entrepreneur. Like, really fast.

He says, “Perry, you’re ahead of me in the entrepreneur game, could you coach me?” He asks if we can talk once a week.

For a moment I hesitate. Once a week, that’s a lot of time commitment. But Tom’s a good friend so I agree. He begins to coach people, do consulting projects and sell courses on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) on which he was a world-class expert.

Tom had literally 40 careers and 5 marriages. An utterly adventurous, boundless, hard-headed guy who learned by experience and who’d been unafraid to make every mistake in the book. And I’m really serious about every mistake in the book. One of his marriages had been to some chick in Morocco, a relationship that lasted mere days.

He was a sailor and a private investigator, he was in real estate, politics, hi-tech, cattle rustling, hypnosis, medical investigation, advertising, martial arts. He’d made and lost fortunes several times…. every now and then you’d bring something up and find out about yet another career he’d had for six months or a year and a half. There was almost no subject Tom wasn’t conversant about.

The guy was blazingly smart. IQ of 170 or something. Did a stint in Mensa which he found rather pointless; held patents on valves he’d designed. His best design came from imagining himself to be a bacterium flowing through a pharmaceutical tank, asking himself what kind of valve that he as a bacterium would like to travel through.

He went into a trance-like state driving his car in southern California and when the valve design was done he realized he was 30 miles past his exit.

He was a self-taught therapist too, and every one of those marriages and relationships had a story with important lessons. When he married Vikki 14 years ago he absolutely positively resolved that he was going to get THIS relationship right. He’d made a ton of mistakes and he was sick and tired of learning the hard way.

He committed himself to change and learn and be a great husband, and that he did. He and Vikki were lovebirds.

And yeah, Tom and I would talk for about an hour a week.

What I didn’t know as a guy in my mid 30′s, when Tom asked me for this time, was that I had major mid-life stuff waiting for me just around the corner. I didn’t know how badly I was going to need those conversations with a guy who was 29 years my senior. Tom’s sixty-odd years of life experience were about to become priceless.

One day – literally at ten o’clock on a Thursday morning – all my unresolved issues hit me like a ton of bricks. That was about four years ago. I was suddenly erratic, wildly emotional, teetering on the edge.

What kept me sane was a couple of close friends and therapists, and Tom.

Suddenly Tom and I weren’t talking once a week, it was twice or even three times. And it wasn’t always for an hour, sometimes it was two or more. Tom completely tracked with everything. Every step of the way, he’d either been there before or knew someone who had. Tom told me something few others would have the breadth of insight to tell me:

“Perry, you’ve dated Laura since you guys were 17. You’ve grown up together since young adulthood. You get through this stuff you’re slogging through now, and when you’re my age you’re going to have a connection with each other that is exceedingly, wonderfully rare.”

Tom knew that not from his experience, but from his mistakes. And from other peoples’ experience. He kept me from doing a lot of stupid stuff and in the midst of that trial, our relationship grew.

He had his baptisms of fire too. Vikki had a bout with breast cancer, which she fought victoriously. That came with insurance nightmares and financial challenges and Tom and I were allies in all of that. They were the storms of life that forge powerful relationships. I lost my father at age 17 and Tom was the closest thing I had to a dad.

In early August I got a text from Tom: “Hey Perry, sure would like to talk with you soon. Got some scary news and need your prayers and friendship.”

He’d been to the doctor with some digestive problems and found out he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I prayed for him and pledged him my support.

No good prognosis from US doctors, so he spent a couple of weeks in Mexico. Then two weeks ago today Vikki got in touch with me and said, “Perry, Tom’s on life support, I think you need to come to Reno.”

After eight surreal days with Tom and his family, he was gone.

During this time, I witnessed a stream of close friends come to his room in Intensive Care and talk to him. He couldn’t talk back, couldn’t respond much, but he could hear. I heard story after story that closely resembled mine, in-person and even on speaker phone:

“Tom, buddy, you were like a father to me, and you kept me from jumping off a building a couple of times.”

Tom came to my Roundtable meetings and I recently found out that one guy, who’d hit some sticky wickets earlier this year, was getting coached by Tom on a weekly basis. I don’t know that he was even charging for it. Tom was capably steering him through a financial crisis and righting his ship.

Tom hadn’t said a word about the cancer to most people because he knew it would make most people panic. He thought he had a shot at beating it (and hey, if anyone could it would be Tom) so he conducted business as usual.

The time I spent with Tom and family last week was the most intense I have ever experienced. A dizzying tour of powerful emotions, spiritual epiphanies, outpourings of love, assurance from my Heavenly Father that all was truly well with Tom.

Tom Hoobyar, you’re a totally unique man. We’ve had a totally unique relationship. I love you and I’m gonna miss you. Blessings to you today.

I’m reminded of a song I love, Time and Motion:

Time and motion
Flesh and blood and fire
Lives connect in webs of gold and razor wire
Spin a thread of precious contact
Squeeze in all that you can find
Spontaneous relations
And the long enduring kind

My friend, blessings to you. In a world where most relationships are transitory, my wish for you is a few friendships… of that long enduring kind.

Perry Marshall

P.S.: It’s Friday. Do yourself a favor and listen to me and Tom having one of our famous conversations. It’s called “Navigating the Storms of Life.” You can hear it, along with Tom’s manifesto called “12 Laws of Life,” below.

P.P.S.: Tom’s memorial service is Saturday October 29 in the Bay area. Details will be posted soon at www.TomHoobyar.com. If you have Tom stories you’d like to share, I’d love to hear them. Post in the comments below.

Navigating the Storms of Life:

Press Play

Download MP3

Tom Hoobyar’s Manifesto of Accumulated Wisdom: 12 Facts of Life

“People Reading” – Tom Hoobyar on Body Language

Ain’t No Recession in The Motor City

This morning I got this email from Susan Kruger. She’s from Detroit. She sells study skills curriculum to public schools (which are a troubled bunch these days):

~~~

Perry,

We have a very long sales cycle, so it will take a little while to get a full picture on all of our initiatives.  However, these are some metrics I can tell you for sure:

* August 2011 = our best sales month…ever!   40% better than August 2010.

* Amazon sales are rising sharply, despite our book being six years old (a “dinosaur” by publishing standards).

* Power Emails (inspired by Swiss Army Knife) = 3x response over any email we’ve ever sent!

* Largest school adoption ever . . . from the largest school district in the country!  They said they found us in August, but they just placed an order in September. (So this sale is not reflected in the August 2011 info above.)

Perry & Bryan, I am forever grateful for all of your wisdom and the integrity upon which you deliver it!  This information does not even address the fact that our company was launched on the back of a Bobsled Run a couple years ago.

I was so green that I had to sign a waiver on the guarantee because I had NO traction to demonstrate that this could be a viable business.  But, it didn’t matter.  We still met all of the benchmarks promised as part of your guarantee . . . and went from $0 to half-million/year in less than 2 yrs.

Recession?   In the Motor City?

Not here.

Susan Kruger