Years later, a young woman asked him, “What’s the secret to success?”
“Principle #247,” Kop said. “ Don’t just start things. Finish them. The magic is in the checkmark. ”
You don’t need one thousand principles. You need three that you live every day. Find yours. Ignore the rest. And teach someone else before you die.
Kop didn’t give him a speech. He handed Eddie a blank notebook and a single index card.
And she drew a checkmark.
Kop chuckled. “Read? Or applied?”
Eddie changed one thing: he raised his prices by 4% and added a single follow-up email sequence. That one-inch push, repeated over eight months, took him past $300,000. On a cold November morning, Eddie got the call. Kop had passed away in his sleep. The funeral was small. Afterward, Kop’s widow handed Eddie a shoebox.
He drove to see Kop, who was now 82 years old and still shuffling his cards.