Last weekend, I embarked on one of my craziest adventures yet. A HALO skydive (High-Altitude Low-Opening). It’s on my BIG Life List and that’s another big checkmark. Plus, we were able to (with your help) raise over $32,000.00 for the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South Africa. (Side note: I believe you can still donate if you have not yet.)

I’m still waiting on the video but as soon as that’s ready – I’ll post it up here. I figured, I’d give you the recap and a few pics in the meantime.

My buddy and co-author for “Moonlighting on the Internet”, Rob Olic, and Maverick Business Adventures™ founding member, Mike Filsaime, were the only guys brave enough (or stupid enough) to come with me down to Mississippi. I’m now the 40th civilian to have done a tandem HALO skydive (Filsaime is #41 and Rob is #42).

Just a quick background on HALO skydives – they were designed during the 60’s as a military maneuver to insert troops behind enemy lines undetected. That’s because the paratroopers jump from 30,000 feet (the cruising altitude of a commercial jet) so on radar everything looks normal. What’s more, the temperature up at 30,000 feet is about 25 degrees below zero (so damn frickin cold!) and you have to wear a full oxygen mask for two reasons.

1) Because at that altitude you’ll remain conscious about 30 seconds without oxygen
2) You need to pre-breathe pure oxygen for about 40 minutes to purge all the nitrogen out of your system to avoid getting the ‘bends’.

Good stuff, right?

Needless to say the week leading up to my jump, Missy, was freaking out a bit. Rationally, skydiving isn’t really riskier than the other stuff I’ve done – but emotionally it gets a lot of people worked up. After checking on our life insurance and talking to the jumpmaster I got a green light.

So the 3 of us arrived on Friday night in New Orleans to hang out with a few friends, eat some good food and take in some local music. Our local guides, Chris Daigle and Chad Mac, did not disappoint. Dinner was awesome and I had frog legs and pork belly. And for dessert a little green tomato pie. I know it sounds a bit freaky – but it was awesome. Afterwards we headed to the House of Blues to check out the Radiators. That just wasn’t our scene. The band didn’t seem to have much energy that night. So we went to plan B and checked out a local group called “Soul Rebel”.

This was like a 180-shift – the place was rockin’. What a live performance! You can check out some of their music here – I believe the genre is something called “Brass Funk” – but it’s really eclectic. They’ve got a bunch of brass instruments and then combined with jazz, reggae, hip-hop, etc.

We didn’t have a late night (unfortunately) because we were all trying not to have more than a few drinks for our big jump on Sunday. So we crashed out early (for New Orleans standards anyway) at 2 AM. The next morning we packed up and headed East for Lumberton, MS. (I believe the population is like 400 people – so insert your own joke here.)

That’s where we met up with the team responsible for keeping us alive. Most of them were ex-military and the whole deal certainly had an air of a military operation to me. As we were hanging out on the ‘compound’, I hear a man walk up and start asking, “Mike Filsaime?….Yanik Silver? I thought that was you guys!”

Pretty funny. Michael Worthington lives there and his daughter runs the snack bar at the skydive center. He’s a customer of both of us – makes you realize how wide the Internet Marketing really is now. Michael and his wife, Pauline, were great and took good care of us.

A little side note along the same lines – last May in Vegas for the Zero-G Maverick adventure, we got picked up by our limo driver and his jaw just about dropped when Brad Fallon, Mike Filsaime and I walked out of the hotel. He told us he had a StomperNet CD in his limo right now and was a huge fan and customer of each of us. In fact, he said he had driven people Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, etc and was most excited to have us in his car. 

Onward…

We spent the rest of day getting fitted for our equipment consisting of a flight suit, oxygen mask, helmet, goggles, gloves, oxygen bail out canister and communication system. Pretty hard core stuff. Then we got trained on what to expect while up there, hand signals, how to switch from the onboard O2 regulator to our portable bail out canisters, how to jump out of the plane, etc. Phew!

We finished up around 5pm and decided to check out the latest Batman flick “Dark Knight”. Wow! I think it’ll land in my top-10 for movies for sure. I really loved it and without being too morbid, Heath Ledger’s performance, as the Joker, just stole the show. I heard a lot of reviews of the movie and this lived up to the hype and then some. We all hit the sack early because we had to be up by 5:45 AM to head to the airport.

I had no trouble sleeping and I guess Mike didn’t either because we had to bang on Filsaime’s door to wake him up! After a quick muffin – we drove out to the airfield with just a tiny bit of trepidation building in all of us. For me, the day before when I was being fitted for my Oxygen mask – I felt just a slight hint of claustrophobia. About 15 years ago when I went scuba diving for the first time, I felt that same way and slightly panicked. I was concerned I couldn’t just bounce up to the top of the surface without doing some damage to myself – but I put that fear aside and started getting geared up.

At 7:30 AM, the local NBC reporter came to do an interview with Mike and I about the jump and the ‘fall-a-thon’ to support the Branson School of Entrepreneurship.

We were sitting pretty tight, shoulder-to-shoulder. I couldn’t see Rob but I could see Filsaime who was a bit across from me (he’s the first guy on the left in the pic below) . The only person you can talk to is your tandem instructor because you are hooked into your comm unit with them.

With everyone else, you can only make hand signals and gestures. Mine were off the one-fingered variety at Mike and they taught us in training you are supposed to respond in kind to make sure you brain is working and you aren’t suffering from hypoxia.

I could watch my tandem partner, Ben’s altimeter rising and at about 7,000 feet I started to feel like I couldn’t take another 30 minutes to get to altitude. But I relaxed and just focused on my breathing – which isn’t that reassuring because you sound like Darth Vader – and that’s the only thing you hear in your head.

I kept watching the altimeter….

10,500….14,750….21,800….28,500…then the action started!

We had to switch off from the bigger Oxygen compressor inside the plane and move onto our portable bail out canisters. And then 30 second later – Ben and I started moving towards the door. Mind you, I had a view of the door – the entire way up so I could see just how far up 28,500 feet is (Unfortunately the FAA is not letting them jump above 29,000 ft anymore).

I faced the door and waited for Ben to hook me into the tandem harness – while praying that these 4 little clips would hold us together. But I didn’t have too much time to consider that because the door opened and we rocked back and forth twice and hurled ourselves out!

Mike later told me that’s when he started freaking out a little because it was like a James Bond movie. One second I was in the plane with him and the next second I was a half mile away very much out of the plane!

That first feeling is unreal because your body and mind are trying to come to grips with what just happened. But then I settled into a calm freefall. (I guess calm is relative since I believe we were traveling at 200mph – but it felt calm anyway.) Here I am in freefall:

On the way down you are supposed to equalize the pressure in your ears – but I couldn’t find the right spot on my nose piece to hold my nose shut so my ears killed. They got better as we kept falling. It was really interesting to start off in a freezing cold section of the atmosphere above the clouds and then we literally fell through a line that took us from cold to very warm. Here’s a view of us from above where you can see the ground:

Overall, we had 2 minutes and 15 seconds of freefall (more than double the normal skydive) but it felt like 30 seconds to me. I couldn’t believe it when I felt the upward jolt from the parachute opening up. We fell from 28,500 ft and opened up at 5,000 ft. I could relax and take in the scenery as we came down for a landing at the dropzone.

After the 3 of us landed we had a quick exit interview with NBC. (You can see my hair looks all screwy.) Of course, after high-fiving Mike and Rob – I quickly gave Missy a phone call to tell her I was alive and well!

After hanging out for a bit – we headed back to New Orleans for a little Cajun celebration and the beer definitely tasted a little better than ever going down!

Thank you…thank you…thank you!

Our HALO Skydiving ‘fall-a-thon’ is a success.

Yesterday, I got notice of a $5000 donation from one of my Maverick Business Adventures members that puts the total raised at $15,749.00 — so that’s over $30k since Mike Filsaime and I are both kicking in $7500/each. Great news and even better news for the students at the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South Africa. Even though we hit the goal that doesn’t mean we can’t crush it.

I’m here in New Orleans getting ready to go to dinner and then head over for training tomorrow at the dropzone. Would love nothing better than to see even more donations come in. Plus, there’s still the Amazon kindle up for grabs. Read the previous post for rules and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates on our HALO skydive. (We’ll see, but it looks like we might get picked up on TV from local news programs.)

One more thing, my friends Michel Fortin and Slyvie Fortin, are running their own charity campaign to support breast cancer. Sylvie is a breast cancer survivor and I’m sure you know many people affected by this terrible disease. In fact, my mother had breast cancer and ovarian cancer. She was a real warrior who battled cancer for 10+ years before finally passing away 3 years ago. (And in the process baffling all her doctors several times!) Michel and Sylvie will be cornering a bunch of online experts and putting on an incredible teleseminar as a special gift for you donation (actually it’s just a pledge). Check it out here.

Wish me luck…next time you hear from me there will probably be some cool video and pics up here of our HALO skydive. And of course announcing the winner of the Kindle.

I just tweeted about this

Kindle contest update. Most creative promotion of the charity HALO skydive page gets the Kindle.

Send people over to this page (me and Mike don’t make a dime – 100% of the donation goes to the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in S. Africa). Only rules are nothing illegal and no spam. Get creative and have fun. There are only 4 days left for the charity ‘fall-a-thon’.

Post a comment with what you’ve done here or reply back to me on Twitter. I’ll be announcing the winner after my skydive. If you want to check out more about the cool prize – you can see it here. I love my Kindle. It’s pretty slick from the wireless access where you can download ebooks in seconds to the crisp way the print shows up on the screen. I’ve seen other ebook readers and they all kinda suck compared to this one. Plus, you can send documents to be converted to your Kindle, highlight, do clippings and much more. It’s $359 right now on Amazon.

Okay got it? Let’s see what you got…

Okay I think I need to admit I was wrong.

I’ve been telling my friends that Twitter is one of the silliest things in the world – but now I might have to eat my words…

You see, I was thinking about Twitter for my own personal use – i.e. wanted to know exactly what my friends were doing at all times. Who cares? Well – it seems like a lot of people do. In fact, I just started updating my Twitter profile – you can follow me at www.twitter.com/yaniksilver (So in case you wonder what’s going on in my world aside from when I update this blog – you can follow along! Plus, I’ve got a new Amazon Kindle ebook reader that I’m going to give away to someone who follows me. Not sure how yet – but we’ll figure out something fun together. So click here to follow me.)

The reason I’m going to be using it is applying to what I’ve discussed before in a recent Secret Society newsletter – and that is applying personality to your web presence. Twitter is perfect for this. Just a quick recap in case you haven’t seen twitter – it’s a “microblogging” platform. You’ve got 140 characters that you can update via web or text messaging and let your ‘followers’ know what you are doing at this moment.

For companies who want to put out more personality – this is great. Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos.com, who spoke at Underground® 4 is using Twitter in a big way. He’s got over 9,026 followers (that’s huge). Funny enough, I was buying new flip flops and on the thank you page at Zappos – they had an invitation to follow Tony via Twitter. Check out Tony’s twitter profile at www.twitter.com/zappos

Notice the kinds of ‘tweets’ he puts out. Not too much to do with business but a whole lot to do with the personality of Zappos. It’s about solidifying the fact they truly live their values. Tony is such a big fan he’s even put up a page on Zappos dedicated to Twitter and getting started with it -
http://twitter.zappos.com/start

If you go back and look at the history of Tony’s tweets – they are a tiny amount that are promotional in nature.

I think this is taking blogging to the next level. I love my blog for the interactivity and the ability to transmit my personality across to readers – creating that bond. With Twitter – you can do this 140 characters at a time. Try it and don’t forget to follow me for a chance to win that Amazon Kindle.

What do you think?

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I have to give credit to John Reese to opening my eyes to the potential here on Twitter. Now as ‘big, bad marketers’ we are always looking at new ways to getting our message across – but Twitter is interesting because only your ‘followers’ will get your messages. So you cannot blatantly bombard your twitter contacts with pitches because they’ll stop following you (just like opting out). If you don’t have anything interesting to say or do (hmmm….like a HALO skydive!) then they’ll drop you. John covers Twitter and a slew of other new ways to get traffic to your site in his new Traffic Secrets 2.0 resource. It goes on sale today at noon.

You’ve probably heard of “Walk-a-Thons”, right?

You know where you sponsor someone for every mile they walk, right? Well…you know me and I can’t just do a typical fund raiser…it’s got to be a bit more Maverick over here.

So we’ve come up with a “Fall-a-Thon”!

Next Sunday, July 20th, my buddy and fellow Maverick Business Adventures member, Mike Filsaime, and I are jumping out of a perfectly good plane at 30,000 feet. (Oh yeah – that’s the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner and double the normal skydiving altitude).

Why?

Aside from it being another item to check off on my “Big Life List” – it’s also to support the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South Africa. Their mission is to:

• Identify and nurture individuals with entrepreneurial potential
• Develop potential entrepreneurs in a practical, relevant and holistic way
• Provide students with real-world business skills and mentorship
• Promote entrepreneurship as a desirable career option and
• Support start-ups and micro-enterprises with skills, mentors, services, networks and finance arrangements

Every single penny of your pledge goes to support the education and programs here because 100% of the Virgin Unite (Virgin’s charity arm) overhead is borne by Sir Richard Branson. In fact, this school is the first time he has lent his personal name to any project. I have come to truly appreciate you guys as some of the most generous people on the planet. But as a little ‘incentive’ Mike and I wanted to show our thanks by putting together $524.89+ in special gifts just for supporting the two of us. In fact, a fraction of a penny pledged will qualify you for these resources (many of which are unavailable for sale anywhere else).

Our goal is to raising $1 (or more) for every foot we fall and are committed to matching funds up to $15,000.00 from our own pockets! So if you donate $100 we pony up the same c-note.

After personally spending time with Branson and the team from Virgin Unite in Necker Island – I’ve been even more inspired with what they are doing. We firmly believe entrepreneurial innovations and initiatives are going to help alleviate the biggest social issues. At Virgin Unite they call it – “Driving Business As a Force for Good”. With your donation – you can feel fulfilled knowing you’ve really made a difference to young, up-and-coming entrepreneurs in a part of the world that badly needs it.

Mike and I do not make a single dime from this so please support this anyway you can and tell a friend. Thanks!

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In other news, I’m excited to announce 2-time Super Bowl champ, Carl Banks, is coming to Aspen for the upcoming Maverick Business Adventures™ “Rocky Mountain High” Experience Aug. 13-17, 2008.

Carl was a member of the Giants teams that won Super Bowls XXI and XXV.

But that’s just one part of Carl’s life. Staring during his playing days, Banks started designing clothes for his teammates. The clothing became so popular that he began to distribute them to major retailers and soon joined G-III Apparel to distribute the GIII/Carl Banks line of clothing which was a partnership that became highly successful. So successful that sales for this apparel manufacturer, licensee and distributor for 2007 added up to $518,870,000.00.

He won’t simply be there for a quick hour or 2. Carl will actually be with the Mavericks whitewater rafting and taking part in the adventure together.

What’s more, following white water rafting there’s another big surprise for members…

Carl is going to be firing up the grill and hosting a down home BBQ at our lodge! That’s right, we’ll get to chow down on his new “Famous 58″ line of barbecue products, already successfully sold on HSN.

There’s just one spot left for the adventure.

Don’t forget our celebrity icons are just the ‘cherry on top’ because the actual Maverick members coming are really some of the world’s most successful (and sharing) entrepreneurs. They are recognized as the top of their respective professions ranging from online pioneers, INC 500 companies, multi-national manufacturers, heads of financial institutions, renowned experts to International real estate developers and restaurateurs.

Fact is, a connection with any of these guys, to the right person, is worth a small fortune. And it’s exactly these kind of unique experiences that can provide the deeper, more meaningful connections than just meeting someone in a seminar or at the bar.

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Final thing – I also just read a really interesting report from Chris Guillebeau – he piqued my interest with the way he lives his life and runs his business from remote location – while truly giving back! I’m working on interviewing him for a Secret Society interview soon.

Here’s an article I wrote a few years ago – I think the lessons here about freedom and independence are still incredibly timely so I’m reprinting it.

And in other exciting news – it’s Zoe 1st Birthday on Sunday so we’re getting ready around here for a crazy horde of hopped-up-on-too-much-sugar-kids to swarm our house! Wish me luck! (BTW – I’m thinking we’re going to do a sale on her actual birthday for a day or two – so keep your eyes peeled if I decide to.)

* Update: I decided to do it. It’s a 48-hour sale. Here’s the link *

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July 4th for Americans is a chance to celebrate our independence. Trust me, I’m not going to get on a soapbox and start waving the flag – but I do think it’s important no matter what country you live in to really think about that word “independence” and its meaning for you.

My father reminded me that July 3, 1976 was his “Independence day” since that’s the date my family came over to the United States from Russia. (Pretty cool since it was right before the bi-centennial celebration.)

For me, my independence day was on July 1, 1999.

That’s the date I left my father’s business to work on my own. It was by far one of the hardest decisions of my life. You see, I had worked for my dad since I was 12 and he thought I was going to take over the company. I had that same thought as well until I got the “bug”. In fact, my wife, Missy, and I were talking about this recently. She was talking about how when she met me 11 years ago, I had only one thought: “how to grow my father’s business”. I would stay late working on new ads and marketing pieces. I was in early calling my accounts trying to make sales, etc. etc.

Now I had been studying direct marketing, and results were really paying off for my dad’s business. (Actually they still use a lot of the ads I wrote in 1998 because they still work today.) But with every ad I wrote I was getting more and more aggravated. Not because the ads weren’t producing sales – they were – but because of the grief and politics I had to deal with. Everybody seemed to be an advertising expert even though they’ve never studied or read anything on the subject. People mistakenly believe that if they wouldn’t “read all that copy” then nobody will. Or if the ad is “ugly” and has no pictures or pretty graphics it won’t work.

Complete and total crap.

For every ad I wrote I had to fight to get it out there. I got sick of it and decided I would create my own product so I could write ads for myself. My first product was to help dermatologists who wanted new cosmetic patients. It was a big kit (manual, tapes, reports, diskette, etc) based around some marketing consulting I was doing on the side for some of my customers.

I ran my first ad in April 1998 in Dermatologic Surgery magazine. I got 10 responses so I sent them the 20-page sales letter I’d written selling this $900 kit. Not one order.

I waited…

Sent out a 2nd notice to those 10 respondents.

Nothing…

Then I sent a 3rd notice telling them the expiration date to get all the free bonuses was only 10 days away. Finally on the very last day of the expiration date I got one order over the fax machine.

Yipeee!!

I still remember that doctor’s name in Flushing, NY. What an incredible feeling. That was the start of my independence. I realized I now had the power to chart my course as I wanted. That first sale. That’s one of the greatest feelings in the world – when something you’ve created is sold. It took me a little over a year after that first order to realize I wanted my freedom and I finally quit on July 1, 1999. Maybe it’s the new confidence you get when you realize you’ve created something that people want and are willing to exchange money for. That first sale is usually the hardest (but also the most rewarding).

It’s wonderful when I help turn on that light in people. I’ve seen it first-hand working my Apprentices and seeing them launch their products. How amazed they are by the money pouring from around the globe. I love it!

So when will your independence day be?

If you’ve already achieved it – I bet you can remember it perfectly. Sometimes the bleakest times that we believe are terrible actually turn into a perfect opportunity.

Take my good friend, Jim Edwards, for example. His independence day came because he got fired. To him that wasn’t a blessing at first but as he looks back on it – it’s the best thing that ever happened.

I remember the conversation we had right after it happened. I was drinking a Maker’s Mark & Ginger and Jim was having a beer. We were talking about different projects he could try and pursue and do now. We were throwing around some ideas and we came up with “33 Days to Online Profits“. It was right there during that call that we outlined each of the days and moved forward from there. And “33 Days” has been a tremendous six-figure income earner for both of us and it hasn’t stopped yet.

So what can you do to achieve your independence?

I’ll give you a couple things to take to heart. I can’t remember the author who said this but he said, “If you show me what a man does in his spare time I’ll show you the type of man he’ll become.” What are doing with your spare time?

- Watching TV or reading?

- Napping or practicing your copywriting?

- Yakking to your friends or studying direct marketing?

It all comes down to the choices we make every single day.

In fact, you shouldn’t let one day go by without making sure you are taking at least one proactive step towards your own independence. Just because the thought of you doing what you want when you want may seem so far away – don’t let that stop you from taking those baby steps each and every day. That’s one of my rules and I hope you’ll
adopt it.

What else?

Learn to be different. The truth is you need to become extraordinary to achieve extraordinary results. You can’t be like everyone else (and why would you want to). That means doing the things other don’t (or won’t) do. That also means NOT listening to their advice (unless they are doing what you want to do). Frankly, if you simply did the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing you’d turn out okay.

Why? If only 5% of people are truly successful and the 95% are the mediocre majority – doesn’t that mean the majority is wrong? Don’t engage in their thinking. Don’t follow their lead. Don’t adhere to the same values and standards the “95-percenters” do.

Two people who really helped me clarify my thinking on this was Earl Nightingale and also Dan Kennedy.

Please don’t get me wrong – in no way am I trying to be elitist. I’m not. But it is tremendously important to go through your day with your eyes wide open. The truth is most of your friends (right now) probably don’t want you to change and succeed. That would imply that they are losers. That would mean they are failures. Nobody is going to propel you to succeed except yourself.

So get on it and proclaim your own Independence Day starting, as Neil Diamond sings, “T-O-D-A-Y!”

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Quick side note: My buddy, John Reese, just released some very cool videos for his upcoming Traffic Secrets 2.0 release. Check it out – he’s giving up some good info to expand your thinking about generating traffic to your sites. It’s yours without jumping through hoops or giving up your email.

Have a great 4th of July!