Busted!
I knew in that moment ... I had him.
What could he possibly say?
He hesitated for a moment and I just stared at him. (A good salesman knows when to shut up.)
He burst out in laughter.
"Mark ... I don't know what to say."
"Yes, you do. Say 'I'm in'."
Have you ever seen a grown man cry? Sometimes it's beautiful. Other times ... it's just pathetic.
This time it was a little bit of both. (Don't judge him. I didn't.)
He let out a big sigh.
"How do I know this plan will work for me, though?"
"Ha. You don't! No one can predict the future. But what I can tell you is this ... I'm going to distill the most powerful things I've learned and put them in this plan. All of the things I wish I had learned early on. If you just follow the plan every day, it's as close to fool-proof as one can get in this life."
His tired eyes grew brighter ...
"Damn."
I could see he was almost there, but still struggling. So, I turned the screws a little harder.
"I tell you what ... I'm going to give you 30 seconds to decide. You get one chance. Are you in or out?"
Hear me now: some of the greatest wisdom in history was once uttered by the Roman Stoic philosopher Cato the Younger ...
"He who hesitates is lost."
Indeed. Hesitation may be the single biggest destroyer of dreams on god's green earth.
I've dealt with this so many times - I knew that if I couldn't get him to make a decision ...
... right now ...
... he'd likely be stuck forever.
So ... I grabbed my iPhone, set a timer for 30 seconds, pushed start, and held it in front of him.
His eyes were two giant orbs. I could feel his fear. Heck, it's the same fear almost every entrepreneur feels. (After helping thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs around the world get "un-stuck", you begin to see patterns.)
When the timer was at 10 seconds he started to sputter ...
"Mark, but what if ..."
I cut him off abruptly.