The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [110]
No, the guy never gave me the answers. But what he gave me was a huge paradigm shift. I left that Jet Ski trip, and I remember driving back to my home. I remember thinking to myself, “I live in America—this is one of the greatest countries in the world, in my opinion the greatest country in the world. I’m young. I’ve got full use of my limbs. I abused myself with drugs early on in my life, but my brain still seems to work pretty well. And I’ve got access to a lot of stuff. If there’s other people having success in business, and I’m not, they know something that I don’t. So I actually have to learn what it is other people know.
What I did—thanks to this man’s inspiration—was get rid of an entitlement attitude and get rid of a victim mentality. I decided, “I’m going to figure out how to do this.” I made a pact to myself that I would not get out of the carpet-cleaning business until I figured out how to make it successful.
Joe decided he would do whatever it takes to succeed. Which meant, of course, education. But not bullshit, abstract, theoretical education. Useful, relevant education. Self-education. He immersed himself completely in learning direct-response marketing—largely the kinds of materials I described in Success Skill #3. He studied copywriters such as Gary Halbert, and fellow college-nongraduates Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, and Dan Kennedy, and started implementing what he was learning into his business. Within a year, Joe had turned his carpet-cleaning business into a six-figure business. Soon, so many other carpet-cleaning proprietors wanted to know his secrets that he began a second business teaching them marketing skills. He eventually sold the carpet-cleaning business itself, and now his marketing training business has generated millions in revenue. He’s also become one of the most respected teachers of marketing skills to small entrepreneurs, and hosts the #1 most popular marketing podcast on iTunes (http://ilovemarketing.com).
Now a self-made multi-deca-millionaire, Joe Polish shared with me a piece of wisdom he himself gained from one of his best friends, business author and mentor Dan Sullivan. Joe told me: “There are two decisions you need to come to in order to be free, and to be more effective. First is that you are not entitled to anything in the world, until you create value for another human being first. Second, you are 100 percent responsible for producing results. No one else. If you adopt those two views, you will go far.”
■ THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MIND-SET VERSUS THE EMPLOYEE MIND-SET EXPLAINED
What is the main difference between the self-educated people I’ve featured all throughout the book—who have enjoyed massive success in their lives—and the majority of other people, who are wondering how to bring more success, happiness, and achievement into their lives?
It all boils down to one thing. They’ve chosen to do whatever it takes to create the lives that they want, including exercising the effort and initiative to figure out what “whatever it takes” is. What they didn’t do is sit around, waiting for someone else to feed them the answer, give them the right opportunity, make things safe or easy for them, give them some “Fail-Safe, Guaranteed Plan of Action,” or give them permission or authorization or the right credentials to get started figuring what needs to get done, and getting it done.
Bryan Franklin and his partner in business and life Jennifer Russell have called this shift—toward taking your success in your own hands—“The Entrepreneurial Mind-set versus the Employee Mind-set.”
I believe that this mind-set shift is the single key distinction