It's Not Your Fault...
A few years after I quit drinking the Amway pink koolaid, I called up a gal who used to be in my old upline.
She was still slugging away in that business after 18 years, at one time pretty successful but now almost back to zero.
She was honest with me about the fact that things were not going very well. And it sounded like George, a silver-tongued Diamond I'd once idolized, was playing his usual shell game.
I said to her,
"Every time you ask George why your business isn't working, he tells you the system works just fine, and you just need to improve. You need to get better. You need to read more books and listen to more tapes and drive more miles and draw more circles.
"But you know what, Sharon? The problem is not YOU. The problem is the SYSTEM.
"It's not your fault. The system doesn't work. It's THEIR fault, and they're lying to you.
"The answer they're giving you is the only answer they can give you, because if they told you the real answer, you'd leave."
When I spoke those words, "It's not your fault," there was silence on the line.
I heard her choking back tears.
Vivid flashback, recollections of my own huge stone of failure and frustration that I drug around all those years—all those times people whom I respected and admired would say to me, "You just need to be a little better, Perry. You just need to give this thing a little more Mojo. You're a winner, man, you've got Diamond written all over you, and I know you can do it. You just need to show that plan with a little more conviction, a little more belief, Perry. You can do it."
I could relate. I had been on the verge of tears many times myself.
I couldn't stand looking in the mirror, knowing that I had nothing to show for the last five years of my evenings and weekends, knowing I was no further ahead than my comatose friends who were just watching Monday Night Football, knowing that my marriage was creaking and straining under the pressure of this dark dream, that my wife was enduring considerable sacrifice for something she no longer believed in.
It took six long years for my rose-colored glasses to finally shatter, for me to realize that I was playing a losing hand in a sucker's game—and no amount of "confessing the positive" was ever going to change that.
In a way it's ironic—because here I am, all these years later, something of a "Diamond" in the world of online marketing.
And just like in MLM, the marketing battlefield is littered with the bodies of "true believers"...
Brave footsoldiers who hung on their general's every word as handed down his paint-by-numbers bulletproof system for instant turnkey victory...
Only to discover too late that they'd charged straight into the enemy's blazing machine guns armed with nothing more than plastic swords and helmets...
While their "fearless leader" laughs all the way to his next 7-figure product launch.
Well, that doesn't fly in Planet Perry—never has, never will.
I've seen what that can do to a person.
How you accept the guilt and shame of your failure, and carry it with you everywhere...
Never dreaming that the blame might not actually rest with YOU.
Never realizing that that YOU in fact performed as well as any human being could expect to under the circumstances.
Look around you.
Look at the people just like you, who are working the system faithfully.
Is the system working for THEM?
And if not, why might that be?
Carpe Diem,
Perry Marshall
P.S. I've noticed over the years that Planet Perry attracts more than it's fair share of people who've been burned like this—and come through stronger for it.
And Mastermind Club is where they gather, for support, for guidance, for good old fashioned camaraderie...
A true battle-hardened Band of Brothers.
Ready to join their ranks? Click Here: