Phone call from my old boss who fired me -

This is an email I received from an instructor of mine, Perry Marshall.


I was fired...

Again

It was a Friday. I was about 10 minutes late for work. Before I could put my lunch in the refrigerator, Wally & Fred called me into Wally's office.

Something did not feel right.

"Perry, we're going to have to let you go. Things just aren't working out and it's time to cut you loose."

We'd had the pleading conversation about giving me one more chance 2-3 times already. That discussion just wasn't gonna happen again.

2 years before when they'd hired me, Wally said, "Perry is a sales guy just waiting to happen." Now Perry was *still* a sales guy 'just waiting to happen' and they had waited long enough.

I drove the long commute back home. When I walked in the back door at 9:30 in the morning, it only took Laura about one second to figure out what happened. (It was about the 5th or 6th job I'd been fired from, and she was starting to get accustomed to this.)

Firing me was the l-a-s-t thing Wally and Fred wanted to do. Other than the long string of failed sales contracts, we all liked each other just fine. They all had families; terminating a young guy with an 18 month old baby girl who'd been born just after he started wasn't exactly their idea of a fun team-building exercise.

But it didn't really matter how much "I love you / you love me / we're a happy family" we all had together, business is business and sales is sales. If you can't bring home the bacon, you don't get breakfast.

In moments like that, you make decisions, vows, inner resolutions.

I made a decision to prove to those guys that Wally had been right at the very beginning and I really *was* a sales guy waiting to happen. "Someday. . . . I'll show those guys. . . ." I swore under my breath.

Part of me was tempted to want 'revenge' but I held that emotion in check. They were just doing what they had to do after all.

But even more than that, I made a decision that somehow or another I was going to find *something* that worked. Everything I'd tried to sell for the previous 7 years had failed.

It's a horrible feeling when you're X years old [however old that happens to be] and hardly anything you've ever done has been successful.

That was 12 years ago.

Well guess what happened the other day? Fred called me out of the blue.

He asked me if I could help him with his company's marketing. I hadn't seen him since the day I got fired. Shortly after we parted, he started a new firm.

Last week we had lunch on the patio of an Italian restaurant.

This time, he drove the long commute from the Northwest Suburbs to come see me.

He brought his operations manager. I was telling the guy how my time with Fred was just one of those seasons of life where nothing was working. Fred chimes in: "Well it wasn't from lack of effort. Perry tried EVERYTHING."

I nod. Yep that's right, I tried just about everything.

Fred asks me, "Any regrets?"

I shake my head vigorously. "No regrets. Not one. Things happen for a reason and there are just certain things you have to learn. Sometimes the lessons are hard. That job didn't work out but it prepared me superbly for the next job, which worked splendidly."

As we're talking I think back and am truly thankful for all the tools I put on my tool belt during that horribly painful time. Not a week goes by that I don't draw from something I learned during those 2 years.

And I'm reminded how powerful it is to have an attitude of gratitude even when, in the moment, it doesn't really feel like you have anything to be thankful for at all.

I can promise you, it didn't *feel* like I had much to be thankful for then. But that just wasn't true. There wasn't much fat to go around, but I was building LOTS of muscle.

And you know what. . . it's been the same story in *every* department of my life. All the various times of relationship conflicts, problems with kids, therapy sessions, financial struggles, evil bosses, botched deals, deadbeat co-workers . . . all were seasons of building muscles, building muscles, building muscles.

During that time years ago I was desperate and I did LOTS of soul searching. Fred asked me what finally made my career start to click.

I said, "I was an 'OK' salesman back then and I was getting killed by the 'good' salesmen. But when I went from selling something where techie skills were *helpful* to selling something where techie skills were *mandatory*, everything started to take off."

That made complete sense to him. The geek department is my #1 strength and everything I've done since then has taken full advantage of my geek background.

In hindsight, all the tweaking and wrangling in the world wouldn't have made that job work well. Yes there are a lot of things we could have done better, failed projects we could have saved. Most of the key ingredients were there, but at the end of the day I was trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. The job was at war with my inner geek.

So. . . was it the *wrong* job? Was it a mistake to work there in the first place?

No.

Sometimes you pick up a LOT of skills during those seasons of pounding square pegs into round holes. (To be completely honest, the pegs almost NEVER fit perfectly anyway, do they??? They sure haven't for me!)

Whatever life is throwing at you at the moment, you focus on the positive, express gratitude, and believe that there is a bigger picture that you truly are cracking the code on.

And I'd like you to consider that if you happen to be in a situation like my old job where lots of things are almost working but nothing is actually working, it might be because all the little things are right and there's just one "BIG" thing that's wrong.

Sometimes when you fix that one BIG thing, your fortunes reverse.

Meanwhile, thanks Fred. . . and Wally. . . and Nick and Ron and Gary and Jim and Mike and all the other odd assorted characters I've moshed with along the way.

My friend, I hope you can feel gratitude for whatever crazy things you've gone through and whatever punches you've rolled with. There's an old proverb "faithful are the wounds of a friend" and it's really true. The laboratory of reality was saying "Time to move on" and Wally and Fred did the right thing by listening to it.

And just remember . . . you never know when things may come full circle, when you find that you've earned the respect you so desperately craved in a prior season of life.

You never know when someone you were useless to way back when, will suddenly find you useful. And maybe even necessary.

Perry Marshall