One of the newsletters I subscribe to is Perry Marshall’s (www.perrymarshall.com). His specialty is Google AdWords, Guerilla Marketing, and other misc. marketing techniques.

Recently, he told the story of an email he recieved. A man wrote to him and said, basically, “I need to make $5,000 real fast.” He promised to buy a $50 book if Perry thought he could make $5,000 real quick.

Whatever, dude.

Perry’s response: “Sorry . . . can’t help you. If you want to spend your life wandering the ghettos of the Internet, be my guest. But don’t blame me if you get stabbed by a heroin addict.”

—–

Wait. Doesn’t Perry promise great results? Yes. Of course he does.

But the guy wants a two-step process: Buy book, make $5,000. Or maybe a three-step process: Buy book, place ads, make $5,000.

What’s missing? WORK! And a product or service. In other words, there needs to be a meaningful, valuable product. Otherwise, you’re just working on some scam to take peoples’ money and give nothing in return.

Make money stuffing envelopes — telling people how to make money (stuffing envelopes).

It is sad, but there really are people out there who want to invest some tiny bit of money and make a fortune with little or no work on their part. These are the people who want to take a pill to lose weight, and who buy hair in a spray can.

I’m a big believer that people work too much and accomplish too little because they lack focus on what’s important, what their goals are, and where to find their chosen path.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in hard work. Any goal worth achieving is worth working hard for.

Whenever the news is filled with stories of people getting ripped off by some flim-flammery, I hear people saying “Tsk. Tsk. How could anyone fall for that?” The answer is simple:

There’s a human tendency to want to get something for nothing. Most people learn that that’s not true. But most of them are still tempted. Over and over we hear the addage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

The internet is probably everyone’s favorite productivity tool. But it is also a tool that breaths new life into old get-rich-quick schemes. Now, instead of trying to rip off one person at a time, you can attempt to rip off millions.

And some people take it even a step further: They go looking for get-rich-quick schemes. They look for ways to make a quick buck with no work and almost no investment.

In other words, as Perry says, they troll the ghettos of the Internet. And, yes, the inevitable result is that one day they will be ripped off by their own greed.

It is much better to take all that effort and put it into creating a real product, a real service, and working hard to make your dreams come true.

For a related article, see The Fred Flintstone-Ralph Cramden School Of Success.

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If you run behind a car, you’ll be exhausted.

If you run in front of a car, you’ll be tired.

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Goal-Setting Part 4

The first three posts in this series are
- Part 1
- Part 2
- Part 3

Now we begin the actual Goal-Setting Process.

Once you have a set of Values or Principles, you get to work on the single most important sentence you’ll ever write: Your personal mission statement.

Once again, this takes some time. This is where you look over your values and principles and try to figure out the whole purpose of your life. That sounds dramatic. But, really, this is very valuable work.

It’s very sad, but many people spend so much of their lives chasing after “goals” without examining values and having a personal mission statement. In other words, they take visible action steps to achieve things that may not be related to the things that are important in their lives.

A personal mission statement is a simple, one sentence statement of what drives you in your life. It doesn’t have to be particularly profound. You can change it any time. When you boil it down to the basics, what brings value to your life?

The important rule to remember here is: Make this your mission statement. Make this your vision for your life. Do not accept “the world’s” vision about success. The last thing you want is to have lots of money, no friends, a family that can’t stand you, and to have a shallow, meaningless life. But that’s all that can come from following other people’s goals.

Your mission might be to related to your family or friends, to serving people or the community. It might be related to a cause you believe in, or to your religion. It can be anything that matters to you.

From the values you listed in the previous exercise, begin working on your personal mission statement.

Take Your Time

Now we hop back to the post on the First Habit of Success. That habit is daily quiet time. And that’s your time to consider all the values and principles, and how they all work together in your life.

Don’t be in a rush to get this right. You can’t get it right unless you take lots of time to consider how these values and principles work for you.

The mission does not have to be a perfect match. As a general rule, your values will only change very slowly over time as you evolve personally.

Your mission should also be flexible. Don’t be afraid to revisit this from time to time.

It probably won’t change, but as Socrates says, “An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living.”

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Did you hear about the cowboy who wore paper pants, a paper shirt, paper boots, and wore a paper hat?

The Sheriff arrested him for rustling.

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There are many great aspects of gardening. One of the greatest is patience. You simply cannot garden quickly.

In fact, one of the most important skills a gardener needs is the ability to do nothing:

- Don’t prune when it’s not needed.
- Don’t fertilize when it’s not needed.
- Don’t plant when you shouldn’t plant.
- Don’t water when you shouldn’t water.
- Don’t even weed when you shouldn’t weed!

I’m not kidding.

The most important part of gardening is waiting.

You put in your plants, make sure they’ve got what they need. And then you just wait. A garden needs to “overgrow” just a bit before you can start pruning and shaping.

Sometimes you get eager to just do something — anything — in your garden.

But if you go playing around everyday, pruning and digging, pulling and watering, your plants will grow smaller and smaller until they disappear!

I’ve lived in my house for just over four years. I’ve had the pleasure of working on my yard for four summers. And most of that “work” has consisted of putting things in place and standing back to see what happens. I’d say five percent gardening and ninety-five percent waiting.

After two years I liked my yard. After three I loved it. And now, after four, my yard does everything it’s supposed to do.

- We have hummingbirds twelve months out of the year.
- We have butterflies, finches, and doves nesting in our yard.
- We have beautiful flowers with something blooming every day of the year.

In other words I have the garden I wanted.

And I would never have had it without patience.

I can’t wait until next year.  :-)

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“Dad,” said Little Johnny, “I’m late for football practice.
Would you please do my homework for me?”

The father said irately, “Son, it just wouldn’t be right.”

“That’s okay,” replied Little Johnny, “but you could at least give it a try, couldn’t you?”

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