What started off as a quick 15-minute Saturday project turned into a 1 hr+ of new material on how to make more, have more fun and give more back! I asked you guys a few days ago for questions and some of the answers were quite eye-opening in each of the 3 areas.
With the elections going on in the U.S. tomorrow – the big idea behind the Maverick Manifesto is FREEDOM!
Freedom to write your own ticket regardless of what’s going on with the crazy economy, the next person in the White House or any external factor!
Here are a few things I covered:
How to truly really create a Work/Life balance that actually works!
Figuring out the right questions to ask so you get back the answers you need.
What you really need to know in order to work once and get paid over and over and over again.
Why you’ll never say “I can’t afford this” ever again…write your own rules for paying for what you want.
How to make sure you turn up the ‘FUN quotient’ in your life and not get burnt out! (Plus: Exactly how to shatter the biggest excuse to waiting for more money to have fun!)
Easy ways to bring fun into other people’s lives who you care about – and create real meaningful experiences.
The painless rule to “automatically” giving back now instead of waiting & lots more!
Check it out and I would love to hear your comments.
I’m looking for some thoughtful insights and you don’t even need to agree with me – but I’m interested in the conversation that arises here.
Hope you enjoyed your little ghouls and goblins ransacking your house for sweets. We literally (no exaggeration) had probably 250 kids hit our house. I swear they bus them into our neighborhood. I was really worried we were going to run out of candy at some point and raided the pantry for anything we could give out.
Zak had a great time with his first ‘real’ Halloween. He was Thomas the Tank Engine and loved it! Last year, he went to 3 houses and just walked right in. He didn’t get the concept. This year – he got it in a big way!
Hmmm…..knock on door, say a few words, people give me candy.
Rinse. Repeat.
Here are a couple quick pic of Zak at the neighbors place:
Poor Zoe, she was too pooped to even make it out. She stayed in her Giraffe costume for about 8 minutes before crawling up to bed.
Across the street from us, our neighbors are totally into Halloween with an entire graveyard scene, a big inflatable pumpkin coach, you name it. (Those are where I took Zak’s pics above.)
Now I love Halloween too and I had to get into the act. I bought this big archway with the words ‘Cemetery’ on top of it. It looked really cool online but when I put together – it took a slight breeze to knock it over. I secured it every which way from Sunday but it still wasn’t enough. Finally, the last time it fell over – I just left it there like an ancient ruin. Don’t know it seemed cool enough. Then I took the cemetery sign and stuck in my shrubs (you can just make it out to the left of the house).
The kids did go crazy for a fog machine I had on porch. (That’s right street cred with the 13-year olds!)
Next year we’ll have to have more fun with the kids and maybe get people in the yard scaring them. Who knows? Or my neighbor across the street, Deb, and I might form an alliance and build a huge archway spanning the street and have a makeshift haunted house in there. Something fun….
And that brings me to another point – where I need your help…
I just mentioned having fun…that’s definitely something I strive to do in a big way from jumping out of airplanes at cruising altitude to little silly ways like being “Count Yanik” for Halloween promos. (Yes, I know he didn’t make an appearance this year. I know you’ve been sobbing for hours about it.)
Having fun is one part of my Maverick philosophy for ‘Making more, having more fun and giving back more’.
Sounds good, right?
To me that’s the quintessentially ‘holy grail’. But not everyone thinks that’s possible – or maybe you’re struggling in one (or more of those areas). I want to help. I’m working on new content including videos and a free webinar for the release of the new Maverick Business Insider newsletter on Nov 6th. I got lots of stuff to share…but I need your help.
What’s your biggest questions or things holding you back in these 3 areas?
Give me your thoughtful answers and you’ll get a chance to win the ’34 Rules for Maverick Entrepreneurs’ book and 2 CD Audio Set.
After the ‘King Krawl’ to celebrate my 35th the next big outing was the weekend of Sept 27 and 28 up in Chicago. Eben Pagan brought together 100 top marketers for a special closed-door networking event (and party). And at the same time WIRED Next Fest was going on in Chicago. Since WIRED is a media partner of Maverick Business Adventures®, our members had special access to a VIP opening party and a semi-private breakfast with their editor, Chris Anderson, as he introduced concepts from his newest upcoming book “FREE”.
I wanted to get up there for that but I had a family function I couldn’t miss. But I did manage to hop on the last flight on Saturday night at 10pm and got to the Hard Rock in Chicago near midnight.
I hit the tail-end of a party and then a big group of us went out to an after-hours club and kept the party going to 4 AM. Ryan Lee, Underground® II’s “Mr. X”, decided it was his job to keep feeding me ‘blueberry muffin’ shots.
Then on Sunday night, we had a small get together at the Hard Rock to celebrate my 35th birthday with 35 minutes of open bar. Dan Schorr, our head of partnerships from Maverick, thought we should start the celebration off with shots of “small White Russians”. I guess he and everybody else found it amusing.
Here I am with the menu:
You probably can’t make out what it says – so here’s part of what’s on there:
Short White Russian
‘Nuff Said
The “Original Maverick”
Johnny Walker Black, espresso and Amaretto
Black & Blue
Sambucca Black, Stoli Blueberry and a splash of red bull
*
As we wrapped up happy hour, one of the local guys, “Dr. Paul”, suggested a Karaoke place that has a live band backing you up. That sounded like a plan. We went out with 10 people and hit this hole-in-the-wall bar. Dr. Paul was a regular here and he got me on the list since it was my birthday. I wasn’t sure that was such a great idea because a) I wasn’t drunk and b) My wife, Missy, told me in no uncertain terms I should never, ever do Karaoke again. (It all stemmed from a night when she heard me doing ‘Coming to America’ by Neil Diamond. She was the only sober one at the table because she was pregnant. She was more vicious than Simon Cowell that night about my performance.)
I put those pesky memories in the back of mind and decided to go with the Violent Femmes “Blister in the Sun”. Not exactly sure how I did but I did go around shoving the mic into random bar patrons faces to get them to sing with me. I even got a few high-fives from those guys so I think it turned out okay.
Here’s video footage expertly taken by Mike Filsaime. I think the audio is kinda screwed up on here so now there’s no way to know if I really suck or it’s just poor audio.
Now the real crown jewel in the evening (and a very real marketing lesson) is a place called “The Wiener Circle” around Lincoln Park.
This is a hot dog stand that’s normal during the day but at night it becomes chaos. You have these gals behind the counter who are into harassing and cracking jokes at your expense. You can give it them and they’ll give it right back 5x as hard. I couldn’t stop laughing. You got to be ready for it or else you’ll be shocked at the anecdotes and 4-letter words there. (Look them up on Yelp.com or YouTube.com for the scoop here.)
Creating the Conversation…
The BIG marketing lesson is truly creating a unique experience. I heard from several people that we had to check out this place. There are hundreds of hot dog stands in Chicago (I believe the most in any city) but the reason we had to check it out is for the experience. Yes, the hot dogs were good – but they really weren’t that much better than others I’ve had. But the craziness – now that’s worth a trip.
So tied into all these shenanigans are a very real and important marketing lesson. It’s about creating the ‘conversation’. If you look at my previous blog post about the Modern restaurant – the conversation was created by an exceptional experience. Even better is something like Wiener Circle that has a compelling conversation as part of their day-to-day, regular activity.
What are you doing to try and create remarkable conversations that your customers HAVE to talk about you?
For Maverick Business Adventures® we work on this all the time and very consciously think about it. I believe a good deal of the conversation is dictated by extraordinary experience and surprise. Give it some thought.
Speaking of ongoing conversations…I can’t believe how a bunch of my friends and Missy’s friends cannot stop talking about my 80’s birthday party from the other weekend. This was the final celebration that Missy planned for me. We booked The Spazmatics band from New York City to come down and play our party. They are a totally cool 80’s cover band that dresses like ‘Revenge of the Nerds’.
Now the Spazmatics did something really smart. They realized they had a great hook and licensed their gig to others in different cities. Not sure how many of them there are – but I’ve now seen the Austin, NYC and LA ones.
The party was like a weird convergence of all worlds. We had my neighbors, some of my Internet buddies like Ryan Deiss and Jeff Johnson, some of my hockey buddies, some of my old college/high school friends and then a bunch of Missy’s friends. My 80′s character was taken from some characters we had at my High School. I had the full-on mullet, John Deere hat, cut-off jean jacket (complete with heavy metal band patches) and acid-washed jeans with holes in them (and SKOAL in the back pocket).
Here are a couple pics –
This is me and my cousin, Sophia.
I’m not really sure what I’m doing to Missy here but it’s enough to make her drop her jaw (and get a good peek at her gum)
Here’s Yanik up with the band performing “Mickey”(while clutching my jack & coke in my cut-off gloves)
Ryan Deiss and my neighbor, Stephen, both Univ of Texas alum doing the ‘hook ‘em horns’ sign. (Too bad you can’t see Ryan’s super colorful socks he borrowed from me.)
You can see more pics of me in my mullet and other really bad 80’s fashion sense on my Facebook profile.
Last Saturday I gathered up a ‘coalition of the silly’ to take part in the first annual ‘King Krawl’ up in Baltimore. We had a few entrepreneurs and Maverick members like Chris Daigle, Andy Miller, Ian Platt, Chad Mac, Rob Olic and Dave Dolak. And we had a few of my brother, Adam’s, former college friends.
There were about 10 of us all dressed up as the King that invaded Baltimore.
We basically had 2 rules.
Rule #1 – Stay in Elvis costume all night.
Rule #2 – See rule #1
We got some serious stares from people starting with the cab ride over to my brother’s house in Canton. At stop lights, people were yelling and taking pictures of us. Then when we got up to my brother’s place we added another 3 Elvi’s to our group to bring us to 10 strong.
Here are a couple photos before the ensuing antics:
And here’s a little video as we ate dinner:
It was a total motley crew of different Elvis outfits and sequined suits. I was the only brave enough (or stupid enough) to wear the fat costume. That was one of my favorite outfits when Frank Kern and I did a road rally a few years back when we barely fit into our lime green Lotus with our fat suits on.
Everywhere we went, we definitely created a scene from people wanted pictures with us to them asking us WHY we were doing this. There were lots of different answers and we never had our story straight. Some of the guys said it was for my birthday, others said they were lobbying to bring the Elvis convention to Baltimore and my favorite explanation someone made up was “The King for E.D.” Then we would sing “Viva Viagra!”
It got a bit crazy – and I have to hand it to the DJs of most to the bars. Within 5-10 minutes of walking in they’d put on some sort of Elvis song. Then we’d do a little hip wiggling and really bad singing for the crowd. People at the bars were pretty polarized – they either thought it was funny and wanted in on the action or thought we were a bunch of idiots and wanted no part of us.
I think both groups were sorta right.
**
Stellar Service in New York? Yup!
Yesterday I headed into New York City for a few meetings with WIRED and an interview with the ‘Forbes Adventurer’, Jim Clash, on my upcoming Virgin Galactic Space flight. Last night, Dan Schorr, our head of sponsorship and partnership at Maverick, headed to The Modern for dinner. He developed a relationship with Danny Meyers, the famed CEO of several top NYC restaurants including the Modern and author of “Setting the Table”.
One of the touchstones of Danny’s book is his philosophy of ‘Enlightened Hospitality’. He hires people who are eager to serve others and do whatever it takes to make their meals memorable.
I wanted to go to one of his restaurants to check out how they do it and keep my antennae up for marketing nuggets. Now the Modern is a pretty upscale restaurant but Danny’s restaurants range from the elegant to a simple ‘Shake Shack’ serving up shakes (obviously) & burgers & hot dogs.
The meal at the Modern is a typically a tasting menu or a 3-course prixe fixe menu. I went for the tasting menu accompanying by a glass of wine for each course. The service was spot on and the food was excellent – but the real story of ‘Enlightened Hospitality’ came about ¾ of the way through our dinner.
Our table backed up to table of a 50-something couple who were obviously not happy with each other. He was yelling at her about why her parents had to come for Thanksgiving to just general obscenities. Seriously. As the night progressed they got louder and louder. Dan was right behind them and it was impacting our dinner conversation. I headed off to the bathroom and while I was gone our wine steward and waiter, Nick, did something pretty interesting. He came to the table and overly exaggerated to spill a small amount of bottled water on our table. Then in a loud voice (to make sure the other couple could hear) he said, “Oops…how clumsy of me. I can’t believe I spilled water all over the table. We can’t have you sitting at a wet table so let me move you over right away.” Then a team of 7 swooped in and moved our table, wine glasses (probably 6 of them) and meals across the dining room.
I walked out of the bathroom and stood awestruck for a second because our table was completely cleared. I looked around and found Dan across the room. The staff had correctly assessed the situation as being irksome and did something really smart (but at the same time not embarrassing to the other couple).
The Story of Stellar Service that “MUST” be Told
Problems like these handled incredibly well create stories of stellar service that people want to share. It’s a pretty powerful marketing concept because Dan and I are practically forced to tell others about this experience. In fact, he already mentioned it to 3 people including the publisher of WIRED magazine. And now I’m sharing it on my blog for even more exposure for them.
A few weeks ago I was in Aspen for the 3rd Maverick Business Adventures® experience. This time we went whitewater rafting, rock climbing, rappelling, mountain biking and on a 4x4 jeep tour.
Before I give you the low down on the trip highlights – I think the day before I left was extremely interesting from a marketing perspective.
Aspen is filled with great boutiques, restaurants and art galleries. I wasn’t really planning on buying anything but enjoyed looking in the art galleries – and that’s where our story starts. (Note: If you have not read ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” this is a good example of the techniques at work.)
The first step in the sale…
The first part of any sales process is typically ‘Attention’ – my attention was caught by a piece in the window that was very cool. It was cartoonish but yet sophisticated. So I popped into the gallery. It was by an artist named Todd White and I found out the work was called “My Heaven and Hell”.
It immediately caught my eye so I investigated a little more. The gallery had a bunch of his prints and as I browsed through them I was paying attention to the sales process. I started getting the ‘story’ of Todd White from Johnny. It was about how he worked on Ren & Stimpy and helped created Sponge Bob Square Pants. I’m a big fan of animation so this intrigued me more.
[Story is one of the most underused ways of making deeper connections and setting up the sale. The story is also important because I get to tell it again to people who comment on the piece at my house, etc.]
That was followed a laundry list of celebs who collect his work. [Social Proof]
As I perused the different pieces, Johnny, would throw in a few comments about the work (i.e. like the “My Heaven & Hell” piece explaining it was 6 of White’s ex-girlfriend and 3 were good and 3 were devilish.)
Johnny showed me a brochure with other works mentioned how most were sold out because he did prints in very limited quantities (like 150). [Scarcity]
After showing interest in a few of them he asked me if I wanted to gave him move them into a better light in the backroom. I declined several times because I knew where this was heading -- but finally let him move 2 works in there. The role of this backroom is for the prospect to imagine it in their homes.
[Commitment & Consistency now takes over since I’m making small commitments towards buying. The first commitment is even picking which paintings I like the best.]
As I was picking from a few works that I liked best I was offered a beer, champagne or water. [Reciprocation]
I’d been through this same process before so it was interesting watching it unfold with my psychology hat on. But something they did that I haven’t seen was actually having a DVD playing that highlighting Todd White’s career, his press coverage, his works, his bio and people who were his collectors. [Authority and Social Proof]
As I was considering my favorite piece, Johnny, asked me if I’d take it today for a crazy price? I knew this was another commitment technique so I kept it vague. Then he asked if I’d take 2 of them. After saying I only wanted to discuss the price on one he went back to the owner to discuss. [Reciprocation after a Concession]
When the owner Michael came back he made sure to discuss the frame itself, the multiple layers of the frame and how ornate it was to build up the value. Then mentioning the hand embellished print so it wasn’t simply a print. [Value build] He gave me a reason about the discount as this being the shoulder season and the rent was due. [Reason Why] and we negotiated down to about 50% of the ‘retail’ price. We shook hands and now a few weeks later a huge crate arrived at my house with my “All Lit Up Again” work by Todd White:
It’s a great example of using psychology and influence in the real world. In fact, I loved the process so much I recommended the Cialdini book to Michael and Johnny. Then a funny little side note – Aspen is pretty small – and we bumped into them at one of the hot bars that night.
Highlights from the Maverick Business Adventures® ‘Rocky Mountain High’ Experience:
Now for those of you who want the recap on the Maverick trip – watch the 3 minute highlight reel created by members below and read on…
The first night in Aspen I brought in my friend and true Maverick, Frank McKinney. The Wall Street Journal called “the Real Estate Rock Czar” because he builds spec homes (homes built without a buyer) valued in the tens of millions of dollars, including the creation of the world’s first $100+ million spec home. In addition to his real estate artistry, Mr. McKinney is a two-time international best-selling author, speaker, adventure racer, demolition derby driver!Plus, he’s a true philanthropist with his Caring House Foundation that builds housing for the desperately poor in Haiti. I think people originally saw a flamboyant guy with long blond hair and easily dismissed him until after his presentation. Frank was pretty incredible sharing his 49 secrets for Extreme Success. But even more inspiring was the philanthropy roundtable he was on with founding Maverick members, Jim Spano and Brian McElroy. Both of whom are very heavily involved in charity foundations.
There was a tremendous amount of interest from the members about starting their own foundation and the in’s and out’s of this fascinating and enlightening topic. Right before the charity roundtable discussion Carl Banks showed up. Carl was our other Maverick icon guest – he’s a 2-time Super Bowl champion with the NY Giants and a multi-time entrepreneur. He helped build G-III apparel into a $500,000,000 behemoth and his latest venture is “Famous 58” BBQ line.
Carl and Frank both joined us for dinner at the prestigious Little Nell. Now most of us turned in early because wake-up was at 5:30 AM (ouch!). We boarded a luxury motor coach to head 3 hours out to the Royal Gorge area for our adventures. For the last half hour of the trip I thought it might be a funny idea to play ‘Deliverance’ on the DVD player. In hindsight probably a bad idea. After the banjo scene is got a little graphic with the most famous (and disturbing) clip from the whole movie. If you don’t know which one I’m talking about – it’s better that way.
As soon as we set foot on the ground we’re off to get changed into wetsuits and gear up to hit the rapids. I guess the water level had really gone down because the first part of the day was pretty slow. Though we did get to see Maverick and Elite MasterMind member, Gerald Romine, get spilled out in, what I’d classify as, class 0 rapids.
Yes, that earned him the coveted ‘Up the Creek Without a Paddle’ award later that night.
We took a break for lunch and held our Maverick business session right on the bank of the Arkansas River. Definitely out of classroom. Then after regrouping we hit the water again for some class IV rapids. It was definitely a bit wilder in the bottom section when we hit the Royal Gorge. Our guide, Kendall, had our boat preparing and drilling like we were a Whitewater SWAT team. Not only did we have to practice and know the basic forward and backward strokes but he had us drill on moving everyone from one side to another so we could sneak through some seemingly impossible spots on the river.
If you watched that little highlight footage there is a spot at 2:32 in the video that makes me laugh over and over again. We were getting bored splashing our fellow Maverick boats so our raft decided to up the ante. Watch and you’ll see a yellow and red raft float by from a random group. After a disarming ‘hi’ we open up to splash their raft. Their guide was totally shocked and lobbed his own water spray right back in an instant. I thought it was hilarious. (Oh yeah – we did again at the 3:00 mark to a different raft.)
I also had offered up $50 for anyone in Carl’s boat to make him swim but I guess that wasn’t a big enough reward to try and dump the 6’ 3” All-pro Linebacker into the drink. (About 2:18 in the video)
After drying off we headed back to the lodge for a special BBQ dinner hosted by Carl Banks. It started with Carl sharing his football story and then quickly segued into his business career. Many people might not realize how successful and accomplished he has been in the business world. It started when he was still playing for the Giants and became a licensee for the NFL selling high fashion leather jackets with team logos. And his endeavors have branched out remarkably since then.
Following Carl’s talk – we all piled up our plates with all sorts of BBQ accompanied by Carl’s ‘Famous 58’ sauce. Really, really good stuff and worth picking up online. As a side note – Carl was pretty smart. He essentially created the ‘Instant Sales Letters’ of tailgating BBQ. He sells people a pre-made, pre-cooked kit of everything they need for an awesome tailgate. Smart. That’s one of my ways of coming up with a BIG idea – give people the ‘fish’ – don’t teach them to fish.
After polishing off some ribs and bison – I interviewed Carl one-on-one and then let members get any of their business (and even football) questions answered. Carl stayed late into the night smoking cigars swapping stories with us. Here’s a pic of him having S’mores for the first time with Carrie Wilkerson.
The next day we were at it again this time being split into 2 groups. Half the members tackled rock climbing and rappelling while the other half did some pretty intense mountain biking.
I was in the rock climbing/rappelling group for the morning. I’d never done rappelling but falling off of things appealed more to me than climbing up things so I spent most of my time rappelling.
Our guide neglected to tell me it might be a little more comfortable with gloves. As I dropped 60 feet down the rope completed burned my hands and when I got back to the top of the mountain I asked our outfitter if there were any gloves, he said, “Oh yeah, in the red bag.” Yeah in the red bag how silly of me. My hands were burning the next few times with gloves too so I’m glad I finally found the red bag.
Before breaking for lunch a few of us went to the backside of the mountain to work on some climbing. I’ve never been rock climbing before either and it was pretty hard. I’ve done climbing walls in gyms and those were a piece of cake compared to the real thing. We had a couple members get all the way to the top in under 3 minutes – pretty impressive. My best was ¾ of the way up – about 40 feet.
One of the funniest moments was turned in again by Gerald Romine. He was taught a technique by our climbing guide of shoving your hand into crevices and then using the bone as leverage. Well – he wasn’t so lucky to shove his hand straight into a Wasp’s nest. I think 3 of them stung him. I had to laugh because I was climbing that exact route 2 minutes prior.
After lunch our groups switched and we went mountain biking. The trail was pretty advanced stuff – we told the guide wanted it ‘Maverick’ style and he turned in a good performance. I was certainly lucky that a camera captured prime highlights footage of me hopping down the trail trying to avoid falling over. I did about 8 hops and finally tumbled to the ground in dejection. (For your viewing pleasure -- it’s about 1:49 into the video).
I also had another tumble – going completely over my handlebars and really wiping out hard. Unfortunately for you guys – there was no footage – so it’s like it never happened.
After our all-day adventures it was back to Aspen for a much needed shower and quick rest before we dinner. Once again we headed to the Little Nell but this time it was their ‘wine room’ for a fabulous dinner with a Master of Scotch from Johnny Walker. It was pretty interesting because each of the dishes we had were all made with some Scotch.
The next morning was one of my favorite parts of the week – it was the ‘giving back’ to young and aspiring entrepreneurs session. We brought in about 80 kids to Aspen High School (from several different community groups). It’s an optional activity for members but we still had about 17 of our members come to share their real-world experience about being entrepreneurs. It was great seeing the faces light up and get really engaged when we started asking for their ideas and then preceded to give them a blueprint to follow their dreams.
I was really impressed with one 12-year old, Garrett, who was in the audience. He already had an eBay business where he took items on consignment and then paid the owners 40% once it sold. The kid took reams of notes and he’s got a bright future. In fact, he did an interview with Maverick & Elite MasterMind member, Carrie Wilkerson, and he told her that when he grew up he wanted to be a Maverick. So cool!
Then we got this note back from his mom:
“My son was among the young people who attended and I can tell you he hasn’t been the same since. Since your [presentation], he has begun his own website and has even begun to make money with it using some of the advice he received…I believe that the seminar your group so selflessly presented has altered the course of at least one young entrepreneur. I can’t thank you enough.”
One of my big goals with Maverick is educate young and aspiring entrepreneurs so if you have an organization that can benefit from the 2-hours of education we provided – we will make it available to you. Please contact Tim Warren – tim@maverickbusinessadventures.com
After the young entrepreneurs session we headed out on a 4x4 adventure. We went up some pretty hairy roads with no guardrails (and some major drop offs) to get to the top of the one of Aspen’s best peaks. I think we were about 12,500 feet up – not sure – but the view was amazing except for 4 anonymous members who resembled Barney:
To cap off our successful adventure – we arranged dinner at the Aspen Mountain Club. It’s one of the most exclusive clubs in Aspen with a long waitlist to pay the $125k membership fee. You have to reserve the entire Gondola to the top of the mountain just to get there. Just the sunset from there was really unparalleled and worth the trip.
After dinner some of the members headed back while some of us ventured out to enjoy the Aspen nightlife. For a small town, I have to give Aspen credit. They have a good party scene and we closed out “FLY” there. I loved the décor of the place because it’s made to resemble an airplane with video screens for windows and the waitresses are all dressed as flight attendants.
For those of you who don’t want to miss the next Maverick Business Adventures® experiences – we’ve now got the remaining 2008 and full 2009 calendar on the site. Check it out. (There are some really cool trips coming up!)
Plus October 20, 2008 we’re running a “TASTE OF” Maverick with a 1-day driving formula cars track day along with business sessions.
I also have a ‘secret’ project I’ve been working on with the members from Maverick – that’ll be sharing some details with your soon. It’s for the people who don’t qualify (yet) for membership but love the idea behind making more, having more fun and giving back more!
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.
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!
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.
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.
I’ve always been a fan of lists and I know many other successful people share this notion. What better list can you create than a list for your most memorable and exciting life? I call this my “BIG Life List”. This is pretty easy and encompasses everything I want to do, have or become before I die.
Now the hard part is sitting down and just jotting down the list but before you get there let me start with my own list.
Right here on this blog, I have a running list of the experiences I want to achieve (as you can see on the right) but my personal BIG list extends beyond what I’ve posted. Here are a few examples from my list (aside from what you see on the right):
Do:
Host Saturday Night Live
Fly my own plane
Stand up comedy at a club
Dance the Haka with the All Blacks in New Zealand
Taste a 100+ year old Bordeaux
Dance all night in Ibiza
Leave $10,000,000+ to meaningful charities in my lifetime
Have:
Own a fully restored MGA
Name engraved on Stanley Cup as an owner of the Washington Capitals (Ted, I’m in. Ugh what a heartbreaking loss this year in the playoffs)
Create my own liquor brand
Create a charitable foundation to educate young entrepreneurs
My own vineyard and produce award-winning wines
Be:
A semi-professional beach volleyball player
Financially independent
Part of an IPO as an insider
In the Olympics
NY-Times Best-selling Author
Live to be a vibrant and healthy 127-year old
Most of my own BIG List is centered around “DO” but that’s just me personally. Yours is unique to you. Right now my list spans 97 items and it keeps growing. I believe in one afternoon you could get at least 25-50 items on your own list. The first few are easy but then you really have to dig into what would make you happy? What excited you as a kid?
What have you always wanted to do?
What have you always wanted to be?
What have you always wanted to see?
What have you always wanted to have?
Just don’t get bogged down in what other people will think. Don’t put something on your list that doesn’t excite you or put it there because you think you’re supposed to. Hey – if you don’t want to save the whales – screw ‘em. Don’t put it on your list.
Keep thinking without putting conditions & restrictions on your list. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s dumb or couldn’t really happen or think others will laugh at you. So what? Go with your heart and just get it down. There’s no harm in writing it down even if it doesn’t happen – that’s how some of my improbably ones have been accomplished that I’ll tell you about in a moment as we move on to how you start having fun and checking off items…
How do you get your big list completed?
1. Write it down. Yes, writing it down is the first step and I absolutely guarantee you if you did nothing else but write 50-100 items in your BIG List you’d be surprised at how many actually got done after 1 year without you ever looking at them again. I don’t look at my Big list everyday – it’s not that necessary but I do certain things to make sure I can check them off.
Fact is, as I was writing this post I went back over my own list again and was amazed to see that 2 things on my list were in the process of getting accomplished in the next 3 weeks (as of this writing). One was kiteboarding at Necker Island and at the same time lunch with Sir Richard Branson. I’m heading to Necker Island in a few weeks and I’ll definitely try kiteboarding on the island – plus I’ll be there with Richard for several days so lunch is inevitable. Pretty cool!
Just the mere fact of writing it down and releasing it into the Universe gives you an advantage that circumstances might be set into motion to start conspiring to work for you. (Hey, that’s my belief anyway!)
Quick example, I’ve previously written down I wanted to be a semi-pro beach volleyball player. I really didn’t think it would happen but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to write it down. Well, now I’d technically be considered Pro. You can check out the details back on this post.
In that same vein – here’s another one…Do I really think I’ll be in the Olympics? I dunno. Probably not – but there’s a tiny shot. Who knows? My publicist mentioned to me the other day he was friends with the former publicist for the U.S. Bobsled & Skeleton Federation. I don’t know how many people are waiting in line to go 80mph headfirst down an icy track so who knows if I’d get a tryout. Maybe – maybe not. But if I didn’t throw it out there to the Universe and right it down I know I wouldn’t hear the faint knocking on the door of opportunity.
2. Schedule it. This is where a lot of people fall down. It sounds a bit too rigid but for busy entrepreneurs unless you schedule your fun (most of the time) it won’t happen. It sounds a bit counter intuitive doesn’t it? Fun should be spontaneous and free? Well guess what? If you stick to your typical schedule – it’ll never happen because your work will keep expanding to the allotted time you give it. You can always do one more work item and your inbox is never going to be empty.
Think about your vacation for a moment. That’s scheduled and it happens precisely because it is scheduled. The more fun you schedule into your life – the more you’ll get. Or what about when you were a kid – most of us had mandatory fun built into our days with recess, right?
Why isn’t there recess for entrepreneurs?
Now you probably won’t go and play dodge ball this afternoon but you can have your own recess if do something about it yourself. Some of my favorite memories have been things I’ve gone out and not waited for them to fall into my lap.
This might sound a little ‘type A’ (which I’m definitely not) but you have to put fun activities on your calendar or else your fun & entertainment by default becomes vegging in front of the TV or working more. Of course, it’s great to be spontaneous but unless you are completely free of responsibilities you’ll need to make plans. And making plans could be as simple as inviting friends over for a night of games or as wild as running with the bulls in Spain.
Side note: This is one of the many reasons I started Maverick Business Adventures to create that ‘forced’ and scheduled ‘recess’ for entrepreneurs.
3. Recruit Others. It’s tough to get everything on your BIG list done yourself (especially if you’ve really stretched). That’s why it’s important to share with others, who can help you, what’s on your ultimate life list.
But there’s a caveat here. I’d be selective of who I share with. You don’t want a negative, dream-stealing vampire to suck their fangs into your life list. But when you find positive, excited individuals ask them what’s on their “to do” list for life and see if you don’t have a resource or a step in the right direction you can give them. And those same successful people have their own connections and people they know that might get you where you want to be.
Okay so here’s your homework assignment this weekend. Sit down and start your own Ultimate Big Life List and schedule at least 2 items on there. Will you do it?
* Resource for you *
I’ve found a great resource to help you create cool memories for people you care about. It’s called Cloud9Living and it’s an awesome spot to search for experiences around the country (U.S. only at this point.). Everything from thrilling adventures to one-of-a-kind learning events. Even if you don’t know exactly what to get someone – you can pick-up a gift certificate. I gave Cloud9 Gift certs to some of my team members and top affiliates. They have a really cool presentation box that’s worth buying just to see what they do.
I’ve worked out a special deal for InternetLifestyle.com blog readers. Make sure you put in ‘SILVER09′ at check-out for free shipping on any gift certificates you purchase.
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:
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.
