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!

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.

Just a quick note today before I head out to play hockey.

3 big events in the Silver household.

#1 – Probably the biggest one is Zak went poop on the potty today for the first time. Yes, that tops the list by far. He’s been peeing for a few days but he would only go in a diaper before this. We all jumped around like crazy people and applauded. Here’s a quick snapshot of him triumphant in the bathroom with his victory lollipop:

#2 – We had a front page story come out about Maverick Business Adventures on Conde Naste’s Portfolio.com site. Here we are:

This was from our last Las Vegas trip. There were a couple little points in the article that weren’t quite correct (like us being a guy’s club – we’re not) or all Internet entrepreneurs (we got $100M manufacturing companies in there as members). But overall – I think it turned out well. (Check out Brad Fallon in the picture – the angle makes him look a little Neanderthal-like.)

If you were interested in attending a Maverick experience – the next one (with female members coming) is Aug. 13 -17, 2008 in Aspen. We only got 5 spots left! We’re doing Whitewater rafting, rock climbing, mountain biking and a 4×4 excursion.

#3 – We launched the new Underground 4 DVDs & CDs today. They are going back into the vault on July 1st (or sooner once all 500 sets are sold-out). If you missed out attending live this is the next best thing! I had a bunch of attendees make it a point to come up and tell me it was the best Underground event yet. (And that’s definitely saying a lot considering who we’ve brought it before.) I guess it makes sense since added together the grand total our speakers sell each year totals nearly $1B (yes, One Billion!) online. The last one was definitely our biggest and baddest one yet. There were about 328 sets last time I checked earlier.

So all in all a busy little day over here. We got our Spring league playoff hockey game for the Chiefs tonight and I’m in charge of buying beer so I need to scoot.

As promised, I’ll share with you how I got kicked off Necker Island.

But first to get you up to speed on my adventures – we’ll talk about Las Vegas first. That was for our last Maverick Business Adventures™ experience – what we called “Airborne Action” since everything took place in the air. It was a whirlwind of experiences from the quintessential Vegas nightlife to real work getting done to a ton of fun and celebrity guests.

After the first day’s work sessions we hung out for dinner & drinks with Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize foundation and Rick Searfoss, former NASA astronaut. Rick gave us a little glimpse into what we’d be experiencing the next day during our Zero-Gravity flight.

It didn’t quite turn out that way and I’ll tell you about that in a second. But first, the next morning was jumpstarted by a guest presentation by Peter Diamandis on innovation. Peter’s X-Prize Foundation was the $10M prize established for a ship that could go into space successfully 2 times in 2 weeks. Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip One did that in 2004 and then Virgin licensed their technology. No doubt, Peter is truly a visionary and largely responsible as the driving force for the private space industry coming into play today. (As you guys know already, I’m #144 on Virgin Galactic and that’s a direct result of the X Prize.)

The X-Prize has now grown to have prizes in all sorts of competitions from the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics to the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE and beyond.

He even gave us insights into how he’s getting an entire new sport started with his Rocket Racing League. (Look it up – it’s very cool!) Most of the comments Maverick members had were around thinking bigger and Peter gave us permission to do so.

After Peter’s session we all headed out to the Zero-G training facilities to meet Tony Hawk. (Yep, the skateboarding and sports business icon.) Tony shared with us his secrets to success and how he’s built a $500M brand around skateboarding starting from scratch. We also auctioned off 4 autographed decks to support his Tony Hawk Foundation and raised over $10,000.00 in 5 minutes from members, Tim Storm, Mike Filsaime, Jason Abernathy and Buck Rizvi.

After that we all boarded up the bus to head over to our airplane for Zero-G. We literally pulled up to the plane and I heard some of the Zero-G staff cell phones going off. Not good. They pulled me aside to tell me there was a part on the emergency slide that was broken and we weren’t allowed to take off. They weren’t even sure if the part would be here tomorrow or if we could get up in the air the next day. Yikes!

Dejected we got out of our flight suits and made a quick detour to private cabanas at MGM’s newest pool-side party ‘Wet Republic’. (Now as a side note – this is a great marketing example of increasing the transaction value from customers. Vegas was already known for its nightlife and now they are adding consumption during the day with it’s ‘daylife’. It started with “Rehab” at the Hard Rock’s pool on Sunday but now a whole lot of other resorts have got into it from Venetian’s TAO Beach to Mandalay to this newest one, Wet Republic. It’s a total dance club party atmosphere just with a whole lot more sunshine instead of dim lights.

Customers are stepping up for bottle service and private cabanas during the day which translates into new revenues from a previously down time. It’s just like the popular Orange Juice campaign trying to increase consumption by saying Orange Juice wasn’t just for breakfast anymore. Good marketing lesson to consider how you can increase the consumption of your customers.)

Okay back to our plight…

The Zero-G crew worked tirelessly to find us that part and were able to reschedule for the next afternoon. So we headed to dinner that night and then to our private poker party. You can see me at the final table doing my best impression of Phil Laak, poker’s ‘unabomber’.

Trust me, I don’t play poker but I actually did pretty well and got 6th place. Sitting to my left was Kascper Postawski looking amused at my antics. Kacper was the guy who knocked me out with a total bluff and won on the River. I guess I shouldn’t feel that bad since he ended up winning the tourney and later told us he used to play cards semi-professionally.

The next morning we hit Air Combat where each person got to take the controls of their plane and become a jetfighter for a day. Here’s Maverick Member and Elite MasterMind member, Craig Ballantyne on the wing of his plane.

I was up against Mike Geary and he ended up taking me 3-2 because I hit the hard deck and self destructed. Flying was very cool since these planes had such maneuverability and you could pull about 4Gs if you were really pushing it hard. I guess I can feel a little better about being knocked out of the tournament because Kacper ended up hurling inside the plane from the G-forces. Not that I thought that was funny or anything.

Straight from AirCombat we gathered back at Zero-G for Zero Gravity flight. This time we took off without a hitch. Here’s a cool shot of me with my Voodoo PC laptop. (Maybe this will one of my new PR shots.)

Here’s Eben Pagan without his trademark pink shirt – having a good time in Zero-G. (There’s something about this activity that really turns people into little kids again!)

Speaking of little kids – there were 3 of us, Chris Zavadowski, Mike Filsaime and myself, who had already done the Zero-G flight. You’ve probably seen astronauts do the tricks in zero-gravity with water as they float around and gulp it down. Well Zero-G provides you with little water bottles to try that yourself. As you might have guessed it got out of control pretty quickly.

Chris took his entire bottle and simply flung it on me. It was one long stream of water suspended in mid-air until we returned to normal gravity. Of course, I had to get revenge and told our in-air coach, Loretta, I needed several bottles of water. It turned into an all-out water fight with us sitting in huge puddles. Loretta told us she’d never seen the plane this wet except for one other time. And that was for a 7-UP commercial where they planned on getting that wet.

Here’s Chris before he decided to turn into a 6-year old.

And here’s after (a bit drenched):

Then here’s us being scolded by Loretta:

To put on a full Vegas experience, I bought everyone Elvis wigs and sunglasses so here are a few of the members rocking their new look (we had nearly everyone ready with their wigs and glasses until our Zero-G flight got canceled the first day so these are the hard-core flying elvises):

We had a pretty jam-packed schedule since we had to move Zero-G to the afternoon and we headed out to a surprise Scotch tasting dinner with Steve Beal, one of only 7 ‘Masters of Scotch’ in the world.

Mavericks were treated to a full flight of Scotch starting from Johnny Walker Black to one of their rarest, Johnny Walker Blue label. I’ve never had an entire dinner consisting of Scotch so it was a real eye-opening experience. And then to cap off the dinner – every member was given a personally engraved bottle of Johnny Walker Blue in a silk-lined presentation box.

But we weren’t done after dinner since it was Vegas after all…I gathered up a group of about a dozen of us and headed to TAO in the Venetian for our private VIP table. It turned into a real crazy night with me getting home about 6 AM and just in time for 15 minutes of sleep before getting onto the helicopters into the Grand Canyon.

In all the times I’ve been to Vegas – I’ve never made it out into the Grand Canyon so this was very cool. We took Maverick Helicopters (no relation yet) and they are the only helicopter company authorized to fly deeper and further into the Grand Canyon than any other company. And just like in one of the best scenes from “Apocalypse Now” – there was a song track of “The Ride Of The Valkyries playing in the helicopter. (Just no attack formation.)

I took the red-eye home and flew on Virgin America for the first time. They rocked! First Class was pretty cheap – something like $500 and really a lot nicer than our domestic airlines. They just do smart things like actually asking customers what they don’t like about air travel. VA has plugs in the seats so you can plus in your electrical crap like laptops the whole trip. I mean this isn’t rocket science but it makes a big difference. They also will bring out your food whenever you want – not when it’s convenient for them. The whole atmosphere is cool like any Virgin Atlantic, which I’ve flown before. And the reason I bring Virgin up (aside from the marketing lesson of actually listening to customers) is because it leads into my next trip…Necker Island.

Okay now the part about Necker for those of you waiting…

After returning home for about 36 hours I was off to the British Virgin Islands. One of the big things I wanted to try on Necker was kiteboarding. It takes about 3-4 lessons before you can get out of the water. I skipped a few meetings to make sure I could get some good time in to learn.

I can see why people would get hooked on it. Charlie, my instructor, told me he taught Larry Page, from Google had to kiteboard on Necker. And now he’s big time into it. Unfortunately, my big kiteboarding expedition was slightly a bust. By the time I moved into the water for my lesson on getting up – the wind pretty much died down. And then for the next 2 days we didn’t have enough wind to go out. Oh well, now I have a big reason to return.

The place is absolutely gorgeous and I can understand why Branson lives there year-round now. The story of how he bought the place for £180,000 is a great lesson in negotiation and tenacity. It’s in his “Losing My Virginity” book and worth checking out. Plus, once he bought it – he had to develop it within 5 years or else ownership went back to the government. So this become a reason for him to work hard on Virgin Records to make more money. And as the Rolling Stones or Janet Jackson had a hit – he’d build a new piece of the island.

Here are a few pictures showing some of the different looks to the island (click to enlarge):

Here’s some video from the island showing how we got served sushi in the pool. That was awesome! You literally jumped into the pool to have sushi with this huge boat of fish floating around. Very cool!

I was excited that Richard hung out with us for many lunches and dinners. In fact, one day at lunch he told me to get a 4-hand massage at the spa and I wasn’t disappointed. The 4-hand massage is a massage with both the masseuses at the same time.

Getting Kicked Off Necker…

One of the stand-out moments of the trip had to be getting a letter handed to me at dinner my final night by the staff. I asked, “Is this my bill?”

“No,” she replied, “You get those in the morning”. Hmmmm….

Here’s the note I got:

I thought it was a joke. The night before we had found the guest room roster and room list and called Joe Polish, Dean and a bunch of other people at 1 or 2 AM to tell them to come back to the bar and drink. Then we sorta ‘updated’ their food preferences inside the kitchen but otherwise we didn’t do anything *that* crazy.

Joe grabbed the letter and then gave to Branson. Richard said, “Well…the manager is a bit serious sometimes but I’ll see what I can do to sort it out. Don’t you worry. Just enjoy your dinner.”

And just for that moment I gulped and thought it might be true until Richard blurted out it was a joke 30 seconds later. Here’s a photo we took depicted me being kicked off the island.

I don’t think I can quite express how awesome the entire experience was. On my final day we had a chance to brainstorm with the head of Virgin Unite about how to get more entrepreneurs involved in their charitable efforts. I have a call with them this week so I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this. Plus, I’m looking into how we can get involved with the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in Africa. It’s really exciting stuff but I’m glad to be home for a few weeks to chill out with the family.

My last post was about creating your BIG Life List.

Perhaps a little voice inside your head might be whispering (or shouting) about all the reasons you can’t do this kind of fun stuff your life. Fact is, it’s these excuses that will sap the spirit and energy out of your life. It’s too easy for all of us to simply believe we’ll ‘get around to it’ or ‘someday’ we’ll have more fun but one excuse or another comes up. Try these on for size…

• I don’t have time to do this stuff

When I hear people say I don’t have time for something really means that item is not a priority for them. Quite simply, the excuse of “I don’t have time” is commonly accepted but if you stop and think about it we all have the same 24 hours in a day. It’s up to you to decide what is a priority. And if a priority is living a full, rich life with incredible experiences and adventures – then you’ll create the time and schedule items from you BIG Life List.

Think about where you might be spending time now and make the conscious decision if that’s what you want to do or would you rather be doing something from your big list. Or what are you doing now that you could pay someone else to do? I don’t cut my own lawn, clean my house, wash my car, drop-off my dry cleaning, buy stamps or a dozen other simple activities. Why? Because I know I can easily pay someone to do this and it frees me up to either create additional revenue streams or enjoy my life.

• I can’t leave my business long enough to do this

A close cousin to ‘not having enough time’ is believing you can’t get away from your business long enough to knock off any of the fun items on your list. You can get a lot done in just a few days and your company will not fall apart with you. If you cannot leave your office for a few days without things getting off-track you have some serious system issues that need to be worked on. (Leaving will actually expose them to you.) Most times if people are left to fend for themselves without the “big boss” approving everything – most things will still get done correctly. Maybe not quite the way you would do it but the end result would be close enough and you’d have the freedom to enjoy your life.

In fact, I think freedom is the operative keyword for entrepreneurs and unless we exercise that freedom by stepping away from the office it slowly collapses. And we become nothing more than highly-paid servants to our businesses.

You might believe you’re indispensable but nearly everyone (including you) is replaceable. It’s important to step back and see if you are truly operating on activities in your business that are core competencies and unique abilities where you excel.

You’ve probably heard of the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule. It states that approximately 20% of your activities produce 80% of the results. Conversely 80% of your activities create 20% of the results. So if you focus on the critical few activities that produce 80% of the results – this will free up your time to do even more outside of work.

• My <friends/family/dog> will think I’m crazy

So what? Maybe they will – but who cares? My wife and her family think I’m pretty nuts – but I don’t mind. I realized I’m wired differently and that’s ok. Typically, my wife, Missy, won’t come with on my adventures and that’s fine because she has a different idea of vacations than I do. We do things apart and we do things together.

Now on the other hand my step-mother is a huge worrier and doesn’t want to know when I go jump out of airplanes or when I go Baja racing. She’s ok if I tell her after the fact – when I’m home safe and sound. And that’s fine too.

The only thing that’s not fine are the people who attempt to reel you in because they know better or think they’re helping. They might say, “Don’t you care about your family?” or “Aren’t you getting too old for this kind of thing?” or my favorite, “You can’t always get what you want.”

These negative people are simply replaying the tapes spinning in their heads. They can keep their boring and dull existence – I’d rather create the kind of memories that last forever and give me something more interesting to talk about then the local football team or the weather.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since I got back home since I was away for most of January between Vegas, NYC and then Baja, Mexico for my premiere Baja Experience for Maverick Business Adventures™. I feel like I’ve been waiting for the trip forever and it went even better than I could have imagined. Members were blown away by the adventure part, the business and giving back all rolled into one. I’m even more excited about this idea now that we got our first trip under our belt.

Here’s a quick 4-minute highlights video, Perry Lawrence, put together:

Ultimate Baja Experience from Yanik Silver on Vimeo.

A couple fun stories…The Legend of Phil “Cliff” Chapman:

The tale begins with an all-day and evening drive from La Paz to San Juanico (the longest drive ever made by any Wide Open Baja customer group). We arrived at Juan y Juan’s in Scorpion Bay after dark (important fact as you’ll see in a moment). The town (if you want to call it that) is pretty isolated and extremely hard to get to but they are famous for the 2nd longest surf break. The entire town was excited by our arrival and the local taco stand was closed all day to prep for our dinner and party.

After our fill of tacos and margaritas – we went back to our accommodations at Juan Y Juan’s. Jesse James had built a pretty raging fire and about a half dozen of us just hung out to talk and drink a little.

Phil Chapman, the Ad-words expert, was down there and the fire crackled and shot flames towards him. Our hero jumped out of the way and ended up rolling. He missed his footing and ended up falling all the way down. (Remember it was dark out when we drove in and nobody knew there was a steep ledge beyond our beach.) Everyone started laughing because we had no idea how far it was. Good thing Phil was ok and he even managed to save his margarita glass. The first words out of my mouth were, “You signed the waiver!”

I believe an illustration would be helpful here:

We started calling incidents like this “Maverick Moments”…

Now part of the Maverick Business Adventures is learning and being around business icons and celebrities. Our first guest was Jesse James, from Monster Garage and West Coast Choppers. He hung out with us for 2 days and was just super cool guy…plus very sharp. During our confidential business sessions he gave us a lot of candid insight into his $200M business. He also sat in on one of the sessions I ran about “Instant Leverage Points in Your Business” and he told us on tape that he probably learned more than any of the members who attended. Pretty neat.

Here’s a quick pic of me and Jesse getting ready to tear it up in the monster Baja racer belonging to the owner of Wide Open Baja.

Here are a few more Maverick Moments…

If you watch the video closely you’ll see a car stuck in the red mud, spinning wheels, with about 5 of us pushing. That was one of my MasterMind members, Mike Dillard and his girlfriend, Stephanie, managed to get axle-deep in some sort of super deep mud/clay mixture. Another car couldn’t pull them out because they’d get stuck too. We pushed them out and in the process got caked (head to toe) in mud. One of the members, a former college football player, reverted back to the grid iron and rubbed mud under his eyes so he’d be ready to go into battle against the dune buggy!

Also, on the highlights video you saw some cool whale footage. Our final stop before flying back to Cabo was San Ignacio. This is one of the best places for getting up close and personal with the Gray Whales when they come into the shallow lagoons to breed. In the brochure they show a family basically hugging the whale and I wanted to touch the whale. I asked our guide how often people touch whales and he replied, “Not so much.” I was determined. Everyone on my boat was cold and wet (the ride out was about 45 minutes). Mike Filsaime, somehow picked the wrong seat because he was just soaking wet by the time we arrived around the whales.

They were magnificent and they were almost within arm’s reach – but not quite. I was adamant. I told our guide that he would get a $100 tip if I touched a whale. No dice. We stayed out another 25 minutes longer than our 2 other boats but no whale touching. That became the running joke – and if you paused the picture of me sitting with 3-time Super Bowl champ, Darren Woodson, you’d see the flip chart. On the left was an arrow pointing to me “Did not touch the whale” and to the right was “3-time Super Bowl Champ” with an arrow to Darren. I forgot it was there for the entire session we held with Darren.

Here’s another one…

I had 2 reporters who tagged along on the trip to write about it. Brad, the reporter from Outside Go magazine, decided he wanted to ride with me the final day. Our cars travel about 1 mile apart so the dust from the road doesn’t interfere with the driving. And each car is supposed to call to the one behind it any obstacles or turns, etc using the GPS mile marker.

Well I guess car #3 missed one because I was flying down the road about 65 or 70mph when a hard right turn came out of nowhere. I slammed on the brakes and dropped the car into 2nd but it was too late. We jumped an embankment and went into a field with massive boulders. I thought we might possibly flip. I got us back to the road and checked out the damage. I need to get a photo from someone but the rim had been bent in about 8” and completely broke off. I was pretty proud of my handiwork and gave Brad something else to mention in his article. [Side note: Should hopefully be appearing in the April issue of Outside Go.]

I’m extremely excited and encouraged by this first trip because members walked away with tons of memories, business breakthroughs and even helped the next generation of Maverick entrepreneurs with our ‘Young Entrepreneurs’ learning session that took place the final morning. I can’t wait to get some of that video posted because it was a group of college students in Mexico and the very first words out of my mouth were – “Everything I learned in college was Bullshit.” The translator looked at me like I was crazy and told her to please translate…and the kids got a kick out of it.

Then to cap off the trip we had a “Big Game” party hosted by 3-time Super Bowl champion, Darren Woodson. It was pretty cool to watch this huge upset with someone who had been there done that. You might have seen Darren lately on ESPN doing the NFL Live show and he literally flew in straight from Arizona to be with us in Cabo. Here’s quick pic of me doing my worst ever Heisman impression trying to block out Maverick Member, Mike Lally.

I’ll probably post up some more stuff here as I get more pics and video finished.

If you want in on the business building and shenanigans- the 2nd trip is now locked in. May 15-18, 2008 in Las Vegas for a Zero G flight, Aerial combat in a jet fighter , Helicopter inside the Grand Canyon, dinner with Peter Diamandis (founder of the X prize) and much more still shaping up. Get a sneak peak at www.BusinessAdventures.com

One more interesting incident from Baja…As we were sitting around having a few beers at Scorpion Bay (one of the most remote locations in the world) the conversation turned to my friend Mike Hill. The guys sitting around with me were some of the Internet’s top marketers…names you know and many others you don’t know who are bringing in 6-figures/month & more.

In confidence, Mike started talking about a hidden backdoor method for getting your site seen in front of the most eager, excited and motivated prospects you could want. It’s called “CPV” or Cost Per View.

Here’s how it works…

Imagine, being able to walk up to somebody at Wal-Mart who has a t-shirt in his hands and say, “Do you know what? That t-shirt in your hands that you’re about to pay $12.00 for? I’ll sell you one for $9.00.” That’s how powerful CPV Marketing is. You literally can grab the customer at any point in any process and make them your own customer.

Maybe you advertise on Google for an extremely competitive, very high-priced keyword. You’re going to pay anywhere between $5.00 to $10 per click

If you were advertising in a CPV platform, you could pay probably anywhere from $0.03 to $0.05 per click, instead of $5.00 to $10. You can literally specify inside that CPV platform which keywords or which competitor’s site triggers your URL to be pulled up OVER your competitor.

This is huge and only a tiny group of people have capitalized on this so far!

Want to know more?

I got Mike to come out of hiding and get on stage for the first time since 1999 for my upcoming Underground® 4 seminar next month. It’s already nearing a sell-out! If you want to attend – I strongly suggest registering immediately.

Just back from New York City for Virgin Galactic‘s unveiling of the Spaceship Two and their “Year of the Spaceship” party.

What can I say? It was pretty cool. Starting at the Museum of Natural History when Branson and Burt Rutan revealed the new design for Spaceship Two. They’ve taken a new direction beyond just space tourism with the design. Instead of the original design with the rocket launching beneath Spaceship One – this new design has the rocket situated in between two high-altitude, all carbon fiber jets.

Here’s Branson and SpaceShip Two designer, Burt Rutan, with the ship:

The new design actually is incredibly versatile and I was really impressed with the forethought that went into it. It can be used for training future VG passengers (since it can mimic the G’s pulled on re-entry), it can have loved ones and family watching you blast off. Or it’s most impressive feature is the “open architecture” which would allow it to be used for more commercial purposes like launching satellites.

Here’s part of Sir Richard Branson’s speech:

As ticket holder #152 I’m super excited and cant’ wait! Though everyone at Virgin was quick to point out they are not in a race – but they said test flights should begin this Summer.

It was interesting meeting the wide range of “future astronauts” in attendance. You’ve got your die-hard space fans, who as kids dreamt of flying into space, you’ve got your accomplished entrepreneurs looking for their next adventure, a slew of engineers, pilots or just “regular” people with an adventure streak. Actually, as I talked to people there – I don’t think I could find one striking similarity except for the fact each person believed they were pioneers and part of something big. Part of Branson’s speech mentioned the population explosion would force humans to reach beyond our planet for survival.

Later that night Virgin hosted their “Year of the Spaceship” party.

Missy came along with me and we had a chance to chat with Branson’s Mom, Eve. As a big Branson fan, I had to find out about one of the stories in his autobiography about his Mom dropping him off away from home and telling him to find his way. I have to go back and read the passage but this is what I found online:

Branson’s mother, Eve, is a former flight attendant who served with the RAF during World War II. One day when Ricky was four, she left him in the countryside with a sack lunch and told him to find his way home. A neighbor eventually discovered him chasing butterflies. A few years later Eve dropped him 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home with his bike. “I’m sure you’ll find water along the way,” she told him, waving goodbye.

Now when I asked Eve about this – she laughed and said it wasn’t quite so bad. She said he was 6 and he left him down the hill and told him to find his way back. But the neighbor did find him and ask if he belonged to her. Mrs. Branson did say Americans coddle their kids too much and she might have a point – since struggle breeds independence. Missy was standing next to me and laughing since I’ve told her we need to do that with Zak.

Here’s a pic with me, Eve, Missy and Holly, one of the Branson’s family friends.

Since I was chums with Mummy Branson – I worked my way over to meet Sir Richard. It’s hard meeting one of your heroes. I told Richard I was huge fan of his way of doing business and we had a clink of glasses over that. I also gave him one of the metal Maverick Business Adventures cards – he told me he liked the name. I guess that’s a start to getting Branson on a future trip

Here we are:

At the party, I also met Peter Diamandis, the founder of the Xprize Foundation. Peter is going to be one of our celebrity business guests at the next Maverick Business Adventures in May when we do a Zero-G flight, Air combat mission and helicopter flight into the Grand Canyon. Peter was instrumental in actually catapulting the civilian space industry by offering a $10M prize for the first ship to go into space successfully twice in one week. And that ship was Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip One (now on display in the Smithsonian).

Next update after Baja…

A few weeks ago I wired over my deposit to officially claim my “Pioneer” reservation spot of #53 on Virgin Galactic. Here are my welcome letters:

That actually makes me #153 because there are 100 fully paid “Founders” who each put in $200k to hold their spots. I actually got a little push from one of these founders, Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, who was my coach during the Zero G flight we did in Florida in January with the MasterMind members.

She got me hooked up with the Virgin Galactic group and told them I was serious about signing up. Missy had some big-time reservations about me going up (or more importantly coming down safely) and spending the money for this. I can’t control the safety part but I told her we’d do a promotion or create a product to pay for it. I was really on the fence about if I wanted to put up a $175k deposit as a Pioneer or just $20k and go after #1000. Well, I talked to my friend, Cindy Cashman, and she inspired me. Cindy and her new fiance, Mitch, are planning on being the first couple wedded in space on a different company other than Virgin. She’s such a fun person to talk to about this kind of stuff. (She told me about his idea for a space wedding before she even had a guy in her life)

Since my marketing brain doesn’t turn off – I wanted to point out how Virgin does a real nice job of their first contact after the sale. Check out this unique package I get after my confirmation. The box is like 4 feet x 5 feet (disregard Zak’s books in the corner of pic).

And inside is a huge book filled with awe-inspiring photos of the space flight experience. It’s pretty cool. Actually it reminds me of 21st century version of Robert Ringer’s famous “Earth” business card/brochure he talked about in his best-seller “Winning Through Intimidation”. To give you an idea of the book size I placed one of my magazines next to it. This is an over-sized magazine so it gives you a little perspective.

On the front cover of the book is an intricate history of flight, aviation and space flight, almost making you feel like you are part of a legacy.

A little brief background in case you haven’t followed the story of Virgin Galactic…they’ve licensed the design of “SpaceShipOne” from Burt Rutan, who won the “Ansari X Prize” in 2004. The prize of $10,000,000.00 was for a spaceship to complete 2 flights within 2 weeks. If “Ansari” rings a bell with you it’s because Anousheh Ansari was the first female private citizen to go up in space. Hopefully, if all goes well, I should go up in the first year Virgin Galactic operates in 2009. Here’s a video that shows what the flight experience on Virgin will be like. I showed this on DVD to my Father-in-law and he gave me his typical reply to my trips, “You know something – you’re nuts!”. I’m sure lots of people agree but I’m incredibly excited.

As a Pioneer we are invited to special functions with other Virgin flyers and I’ll keep you guys posted on the events and what happens. As some of you know, Richard Branson, is really one of my biggest business heroes because of his sucess and the his sense of adventure.

It’s truly an amazing time we live in!

Now I can check off another item on my “Big List”….Zero G experience.

I have to say it was very cool – but really different than what I expected. I just got back from Florida from my final Millionaire MasterMind group meeting. The last meeting of the year I told everyone we’d go on an optional adventure travel trip. Well, I’m proud to say we had about 12 guys on board the flight from members of our group and some of my Internet buddies like Rich Schefren, Tom Bell and Mike Filsaime.

Frankly, the experience is really more peaceful and euphoric then wild and crazy. Though, it is called the “vomit comet” for a reason…and I’ll tell you about that in a moment.

Here’s Millionaire MasterMind member, Jon Tuttle, giving his best HURLING impression!

The night before I heeded the advice of the GoZeroG.com website and didn’t get wild. I barely went out which is pretty tough since we were staying at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL and they have a huge outdoor bar/restaurant area. I was a good little boy and went to bed by 12 and only had about 2 or 3 drinks. Some of our MasterMind members will down there for a good 2 or 3 AM strong finish!

Early the next morning we get down to the training room and get fitted for flight suits. We all wear our name badges upside down which was a NASA tradition they told us until your first flight.

We spent about 45 minutes of classroom time getting prepared for the flight and having an explanation of how Parabolic flight works.

The gang hoping there won’t be a pop quiz

Essentially you are up between 24,000 and 34,000 feet or so and the plane keeps doing up & down arcs. So when the plane’s nose reaches the top of the arc and points down is when you get your “zero gravity”. It lasts about 30 seconds and then you have to lay on the floor because you experience about 1.8 g’s and it pushes your whole body down. The plane can also fly parabolic arcs that less step so you get Lunar (1/6th) or Martian (1/3rd) gravity. There are only like 4 or 5 planes out there that are set-up for Zero G flights. And this is the same way they train astronauts – so that’s pretty cool! They tell us that “regular” people have only been allowed to do the Zero G flight 2 years and it took them about 10 years to get FAA approval.

Finally, we get loaded up on the van and head to a private jetport at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Everyone’s really excited and taking pictures in front of the plane and then we board “G-Force 1”, which is the DC Cargo plane we’re flying.

Before the 1st boarding

After everyone’s strapped in they tell us there is some sort of problem with one of the seats and we hang tight while we’re roasting in our flight suits for 30 minutes. Then we have to get off the plane because the problems turns out to be some part is defective and they have to have it couriered from Miami.

So we wait…and wait…and wait.

The flight delay is nearly 3 hours until we finally get onboard again.

Shhhhh….the little guys are all tuckered out!

By this time our original crew has to leave because they have to do another flight in NY the next morning. The cool thing is I end 2 seats away from my Yellow team’s new coach. Her name is Loretta and we get to chatting while basking in the plane again waiting for take-off. She tells me that her and her husband are one of the Founders for Virgin Galactic, which means they are one of the first 100 to go up on that flight. They had to pay $200,000/each upfront. I told her that’s on my “Big List” too. Actually I submitted my info to Virgin Galactic and told them I’m ready to deposit $20k but nobody got back to me. Well Loretta said she’d fix that and if I put up $175k I could be #164. Who knows I might go for that and then you’ll see a “Yanik Goes to Space Sale”. Or I might just wait and go the second year of flight.

Okay the moment we’ve been waiting for is finally here and we all unstrap our seatbelts and head for the front of the plane. There are 3 groups: Yellow (us), Green and Blue. I think we ended up with the best area of the plane because we were all the way upfront and could use the bulkhead to push off like Superman!

We all lay down like we were taught and you can feel the g’s pressing you down onto the floor until all of a sudden you felt free. This was the first parabolic and were doing Martian gravity (1/3 your weight) but it was still cool. You jump higher and even go for a flip – which I did and ended up jarring my back hard because I didn’t make it all the way around!

After a few of those arcs we went into Lunar gravity (1/6 your weight) – and you could even cooler things like one-fingered push-ups and more!

And then we settled in for the final arcs – which were zero gravity! It was the absolute coolest and most serene. Everybody just lit up into big smiles. It took me a few arcs to get the hang of it because they tell certain stuff but it doesn’t hit you until you apply it. For instance, in zero gravity you cannot just direct your body where you want it to go. So if you jump up – you’ll keep going up until you hit the roof the plane. In fact, you’ll keep moving in any directions you originally set off in until you hit something else.

I had a ton of fun doing flips and then stood on my head and pushed off so I could ‘land’ on the ceiling. Funny how Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” seemed to go through my head. I really liked being able to essentially run/crawl in a circle around the cabin. I ran up the side of the plane, then crawled on the roof and grabbed one of the tow ropes and came down the other end. Pretty cool. I also tried doing the water in mid-air trick – but that didn’t quite come off too slick. They give you water bottles and it just takes a tiny squeeze for the goblet of water to float out – then you go chase it and gulp it down. Easier said than done.

Here are a couple shots of your fearless hero in action:

Dancing on the ceiling

Next stop please. Ding! Ding!

WooHoo!

I also gave flying like Superman a try. My first attempt at a Superman was a complete bust – but by the 2nd try I got the hang of it and actually pushed off from the front of the plane and cruised through the 2 other groups. I wasn’t supposed to but my yellow armband had fallen off and I guess the spotters didn’t see me torpedoing at them. I landed with the Green group and they had like 2 or 3 of our guys. After a quick forearm to the back of one of my buddy’s head – I asked him how things were here. He quickly told me to go back to my group because there was some puking going on.

Once he said that I could smell it. Ugh!

It seems that since we were 3 hours late, one of very astute info marketing friends, Ryan, couldn’t make the flight anymore because he had a conference call for his coaching members. (These guys pay him like $30k/year so he figured he’d make the wrap up call.)

Since he left there was a spot open. And a wife of one of the other fliers (not our group) who had only come along to watch decided to jump in. Bad idea. She ended puking all over the place and then the best (or worst part depending on who’s perspective) is that the video guy filming us starting hurling chunks! I’m looking forward to seeing the video since the guy was a trooper and kept the video recorder going while he stuck his head from one barf bag to the next.

We’re awaiting our DVD and hopefully I’ll figure out how to post some of it soon. For now I did upload a video to YouTube. This is my first one and it seems like the sizing is a bit off – but it will give you an idea of what it was like up there.

I’ve been meaning to post this – so I guess I can catch up a bit over the holidays.

Late October I played in the “Freeze the Disease” celebrity hockey game in Los Angeles. Thanks to you guys, we raised $11,500.00 to go towards cystic fibrosis research.

I was only in LA for 2 nights and I was pretty worried because when I got to LAX my hockey bag and sticks didn’t arrive. I had to have them by 12 noon the next day and I called the lost luggage line like 8 times to make sure everything really was on the way. My sticks and bag came on 2 separate planes – no idea why. But luckily, it all worked out and I got my gear around 11 am at my hotel.

We started the day hanging out in a huge VIP skybox at the Staples Center to watch the Kings play the Anaheim Ducks. It was pretty cool because in the box I was hanging out with a couple of the celebs. I talked up some wines with Jason Priestley (from Beverly Hills 90210) and his wife, Naomi. He’s got a 4,000 bottle cellar so that’s definitely a passion for him. A few notables also in the skybox were Alan Thicke (Growing Pains), Michael Vartan (Alias), Mark DeCarlo (Taste of America) and Bobby Farrelly.

Bobby is one half of the Farrelly brothers responsible for the hilarious “There’s Something About Mary” movie & others. Bobby was the goalie on my team and we talked for a few minutes there – I was interested in if he immerses himself in other people’s movies or not. Surprisingly, he told me he pretty much doesn’t watch many movies so that his comedy and writing stay unique.

The highlight for me was meeting “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe. Gordie is an absolute hockey legend and a true gentleman. This is a guy who played hockey professionally for 6 decades and widely regarded as one of hockey’s greatest player’s ever. In fact, Wayne Gretzky grew up idolizing him. Here’s his Wikipedia entry for more info.
About 10 minutes into the third period we all went down to the makeshift locker room (picture just a few drapes set up) to get changed for the game. I’ve played in professional rinks before when I grew up but it’s still a thrill to walk onto the ice in front of a few thousand fans.

I centered the second line with Maria Dennis from the U.S. Women’s National Team (1990) and Michael Faye, a noted photographer. The first shift out on the ice I took the puck all the way to the through the Defense and got a good backhander on net. I was thinking I’d make some good contributions coming off a 2-goal game the week prior during the University of Maryland Alumni game. But after that first shift – I pretty much did nothing noteworthy. (I didn’t even check Priestly like I joked with him I would in the skybox )

The only other semi-shining moment (that wasn’t) happened when I got a centering feed in the 3rd period from Faye and the goalie made a point-blank stop on me. Oh well, it didn’t matter much since we got trounced 11-5. We were missing a bunch of our ex-pros and at the last minute the other team picked up Igor Larinov, the all-star who retired from the Red Wings. I took 2 face offs against Igor and the first time he just let me win the puck without trying. The next time, I told him in Russian, “Okay, let’s go for real”. He was a little taken back and then we squared off for real.

After the game a lot of us hung out in the make-shift locker room drinking a few beers. I was drinking for awhile with Bobby Hull, Jr., son of famous BlackHawks legend, Bobby Hull and Brett Hull’s brother. We took his H2 over to Michael Faye’s studio a few blocks away for a little after-game party. That’s where I ended up talking to my new celebrity buddy, Mark DeCarlo. I told Mark I remembered him from a few years ago as the host of “Studs”. You might not remember that show – but you’d probably recognize Mark is you saw his mug on his site – http://www.markdecarlo.com/. He told me he’s working on a new show called “Tripping Out” which is right up my alley with cool adventures around the world.

Here are a few pics (I’m waiting on a few more from the organizers)…

The crowd all cheering for one man….no it wasn’t me…Michael Vartan!

#12 in the program but #1 in your heart!

Here’s Gordie (Mr. Hockey) grabbing my jersey ready to brawl

Checking the score and wondering how we’re getting crushed 11-5

Me and Bobby Hull, Jr having a few beers after the game