In Part One of this article, I talked about a recent call I attended with Ross Goldberg.

During that call, Ross was put on the firing line about his financial statements by one of the attendees.

Well, the very next day I received an e-mail from the partner of another very successful marketer – Mike Filsaime – stating that Mike’s finances were not always as good as they are today.

The message went on to say that Mike had filed for bankruptcy only five short years ago.

I have to say that I was somewhat surprised by that information.

You see, I’ve been a customer and follower of Mike Filsaime for several years now.  In fact, he was the first master marketer that I chose to use as my example.

But to think that just five years ago he was bankrupt and now he makes probably mid-six figures per month is a bit mind-boggling.

Now, this disclosure was part of a marketing campaign to sell access to his new teaching course on internet marketing.

But it got me to thinking about just how many other very successful people I’ve been exposed to over the years, who had been bankrupt themselves not too many years prior.

Was it that they were just bad financial managers?  Or maybe they just had made some bad decisions or took some risky gambles?

Whatever it was that took them down to the depths of their financial woes, something else was to be attributed to their current millionaire status.

So what are the characteristics or traits that allowed these super successful individuals to be financially bankrupt at one point in time, and multimillionaires not too long after?

There are probably several, but two jump out at me.

The first is simply learning from your mistakes.

If we don’t learn from our mistakes, we fall into one of the definitions of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.

The second characteristic is valuable beyond price.  What is it?

Persistence!

The one characteristic that all these super successful individuals who were once dirt poor have in common is persistence.

Once again I am compelled to call on a quote from the past that sums up persistence better than any other I’ve seen:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
– Calvin Coolidge (30th U.S. President)

And so, with statistics of 95% or more of new businesses failing within the first five years, it’s easy to see that persistence is the one characteristic of infinite value for all entrepreneurs.

Most people love an underdog.  We seem to really enjoy seeing the struggles and eventual successes of other people.  It makes us feel like we can do it too.  It makes us feel better about our mistakes, as well.

And as far as choosing an example goes, I think we all would prefer to choose someone who has struggled to the top of the mountain, rather than someone who was dropped there by helicopter.

I think it’s unfortunate that the majority of “make money on the internet” types of products show the massive earnings of the marketer selling the product, but don’t show the years of struggles that they had to go through before they got to those levels of earnings.

That’s why I appreciate the successful marketers who share their past struggles with me.  It makes them more genuine and human to me and enables me to make certain allowances for their shortcomings.

It also gives me hope that if I persist, I too will succeed to the level of effort and persistence that I apply to my business.

How about you?