9 Years Old & Caked With Dirt

Perry Marshall, THE guru when it comes to advertising on Google, sent me the following this morning. It captures the spirit of what it is like to be an entrepreneur so well that I wanted to put it in here so I could read it over and over:

Margie,

When I was a kid, I would play all day at the creek, riding my bike through mud puddles and jumping it off the edges of the ravine. Always came home filthy.

Mom would make me take a bath. When I was done she'd say, "Now Perry, doesn't it feel so GOOD to be clean?"

"Actually, mom, I like being dirty better."

Oh yes, I sure did. Dirty feels so.... natural. Moms don't always understand that, but... dads remember.

This week I took my 9 year old boy, Cuyler, to camp. A father-son gig, just the two of us. He's in the prime of boyhood, wrestling with other boys, proclaiming himself king of carpet ball, eating French toast sticks for breakfast, and.... playing in the dirt.

Oh, and does he. Likes to literally roll around in that dirt pile. You pat him on the back and there's a big puff of fine brown dust that flies up in the air and slowly settles down on everything. His pillow case has a big dirty brown patch right in the center.

The morning we went home, I told him to take a shower. A few minutes later I see him headed over there and ask him, "Where are your clothes?"

"I'm wearing them."

Meaning, he put on his clean clothes over his dirty body before he headed to the shower. Then he put 'em back on.

I'm reminded of the conversation with mom 30 years ago when I was nine. Oh yeah, dirty was so much better then.

And you know what? It still is.

It's a different kind of dirty... it's the rough-and-tumble grit of the actual business world. The "is" world, which should not be confused with the "should be" world. What I often call the Laboratory Of Reality.

Today I'm locked away in a private mastermind meeting at an undisclosed location in Virginia. It's where I go to play in the dirt. Me and 13 other guys, we get together in a conference room and the gloves come off. A motley crew this is... banker, surgeon, real estate developer, founder of a franchise company, a consultant from the UK, a platform sales person... iron sharpens iron.

The situations are as varied as the careers. And as you can expect in any room full of entrepreneurs, a spectrum of tales to tell. A couple of these guys handily pull down a couple million dollars a year, after expenses. One member lost everything last year, including 32 houses. Got left holding the bag in a deal that wasn't quite sewn up right. But he's a scrapper and he's making a comeback.

Some prefer the textbook version of the world, but to others of us, the call of the wild takes us to the front lines. It's risky, it's dangerous, yet a true player cannot rest on the side. Better to get beat up every now and then, than to sit idle and dream.

Next time you see an entrepreneur who's up to his eyeballs in alligators, bravely fighting them and taking back ground, just remember - decades ago he was "just" a grimy kid with a baseball cap and a shirt that says "I didn't do it" and fistfulls of dirt pounded into his clothes.

Until mom rings the dinner bell and it's time to come home, he's racing his bike, he's charging across the field as fast as he can, he's pounding that soccer ball into the net, he's jousting and shooting guns and calling out to his friends. He's lost in his youth and adventure.

Sometimes mom doesn't understand, but dad knows.... number one son was made to play the game.

Copyright Perry Marshall
For more information on Perry and his services, visit: www.PerryMarshall.com