You look at your bank account or monthly sales report online and think, “Oh crap! I better get some customers in the door!”

So off you go on a frantic, frenzied pace focused on getting new customers and pushing the numbers up. Phew! Then you go to work fulfilling on what you just sold and sit back until the next time (a month, 2 months, 3 months from now) when the sales curve dips again.

Then it’s back on the treadmill again…

It’s this inconsistent roller coaster of sales that drives you crazy, right? And that’s exactly, I want to share with you a new resource that can help you (and/or your sales team) fill your pipelines with qualified sales opportunities so you feel confident the numbers are always growing and improving.

And to dig into this I interviewed my friend, Aaron Ross.  Aaron has designed a step-by-step framework that liberates you from the anxiety you may experience when faced with generating new business, building your sales pipelines or launching a new business-to-business product. Best of all, this framework is scalable (can grow as you want it to grow), and predictable (reliable, foreseeable, calculable) without cold calling!

This process was conceived and developed by Aaron at one of the most successful startup companies in California – salesforce.com. In a few short years, use of this process helped increase Salesforce.com’s recurring revenues by $100 million.

Listen in (see audio playback below!) as I get Aaron to cover:

•    The Seven Fatal Sales Mistakes Entrepreneurs and Sales VPs (even experienced ones) make time and time again.

•    How sales and selling can be friendly, helpful and enjoyable without cold calls or a marketing budget.

•    How an outbound sales process, without cold calls or a marketing budget, can generate a 9% response rate and millions of dollars from cold prospects.

•    How to develop self-managing sales teams, turning your employees into mini-CEOs and much more.

Note:  There’s nothing on the call to buy, but I’ll be recommending Aaron’s new book “Predictable Revenue: Triple Your Results With The $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com”

In fact, you can get a free preview right here with our compliments to see how powerful these concepts are.

Here’s the call:

About Aaron Ross:
After years in venture capital and the corporate world, Aaron Ross created PebbleStorm, which is helping create a community of100 million people “make money through enjoyment,” based on values like trust, integrity and authenticity.  He teaches people how to discover their Unique Genius while starting a fulfilling business that can’t fail (www.UniqueGenius.com).  Aaron’s a serial entrepreneur and the author of two books, the Amazon bestseller Predictable Revenue, and CEOFlow: Turn Your Employees Into Mini-CEOs.  He is also the cofounder of Predictable Revenue, Inc., which helps companies multiply sales (www.PredictableRevenue.com).

Let me share a quick story with you that you might relate to…

My personal trainer, Jeff, and I have been working out for 10+ years. In that time he’s seen me build my online businesses and develop quite a few hot-selling product in several marketplaces. In fact, way back in 2001 or 2002 we actually co-developed a product called “Get Fit While You Sit”. I had the idea that there could be something for people sitting at their desks or watching TV and he created the workout programs to fit.

It wasn’t a barnburner but it made some steady checks for several years.

I’d always told him he should create his own products and Jeff finally agreed. He started with a workout program for brides to get them into shape before there wedding. I liked it. It was a good niche market with a strong desire for the product. Well Jeff did what so many would-be product creators do – he spent countless hours developing the content, filming it and just making it perfect. Then he purchased a small run of DVDs to have on hand ready to ship. By this time he’s probably out a few thousand dollars and who knows how much time – but the product is done and he’s excited. Now comes the moment of truth, he rented a small exhibit at a regional bridal expo and sold like 2 or 3 copies of his DVDs that weekend.

Bummer!

I mean there’s nothing more deflating that putting in a crap-load of hours and then realizing the marketplace might not be there for what you’ve created!

Ouch!

It took about 1 year and a half after that disappointment to wear off and for him to listen to my badgering to try again with another product. This time I helped him develop the angle of a real “hard-core” trainer giving people no excuses to get into shape. Again, he spent a whole lot of time pulling together new exercises together, putting up a site and pounding out a video sales letter. Jeff went online to sell it and started getting a few sales to keep his interest up — but not enough to be profitable based on his traffic costs.

So this project fizzled too and now he’s pretty much sworn off creating products or selling online.

I can see where he’s coming from and I know so many others might be in the same boat.
I hate to see talented people with a lot of insight, knowledge and passion to share get discouraged and ‘give up’. I think about all the people that could be helped by them but never would be.

Personally, I have about a 2 out of 10 track record. Out of every 10 “good ideas” I have about 2 of them are really nice winners. But the only way to ever figure that out is get them into the marketplace. And usually this involves a whole lot of work – until now…

That’s why I’m so excited with this new business models that turns all of this on its head. It gives you the ability to get paid before you spending the time in product development. And having that cash gives you the energy, motivation and confidence to know you’ve got something!

I call it the “Cash on Tap” System and it’s a totally new way to harness the power of the marketplace to get paid before you spin your wheels working on a product that may or may not fly. And the cool thing is it totally works even if you’re starting from a complete standstill as a complete “unknown”.

Is this the ultimate ‘no-fail’ business model?

I’ve given this a lot of thought and have been interested in why some people succeed and others do not. On the surface two people might have similar backgrounds, education, support and resources at their disposal but they have totally different results.

What makes the difference?

It probably doesn’t come down to just one thing but if I had to really narrow it down – I come to the conclusion its about getting a positive “response” back to what you put out.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you decide to blog and you realize you’ve got to build an audience so you keep blogging and blogging but the site is pretty much a ghost town. You’re lucky if you get 1 or 2 comments for every third post. And it doesn’t take too long before you’re pretty darn discouraged putting out your best ideas and insights with nobody responding.

Or maybe you decide to run some ads for an affiliate product but don’t get a “response” with anyone buying right away – it’s extremely frustrating as you keep spending and spending.

Or, maybe you go full bore and create a product. You could easily spend hours writing your ebook, pounding out a sales letter, setting up the payment processor, hooking up the autoresponder, adding analytics, testing, etc. And then after all that work maybe you only sell a handful (and one of them was to a relative who rhymes with “Tom”).

Ugh! Pretty disappointing, right?

That’s why I say its the response that gets us excited to keeps us going, creating, producing and growing our business.

When you’re hearing from customers about how you’re changing their lives and the cash is rolling in you create the momentum to keep building on your vision for the future.

Unfortunately too many people never get there because most things we try are not going to work. (Remember I said I was at about a 2 out of 10 track record.)

But what if there was a way to almost eliminate almost all the risk of having a failure before you spent too much time or got too deep into any project? And then let’s take it one step further — imagine how empowering and exciting it would be get paid *before* you even created your next product.

Now that’s pretty awesome!

There’s nothing more motivating or empowering than to have a stranger pay you for one of your ideas. It gives you the rocket fuel you need to have the confidence there’s a market for your product. (The cool thing you can pretty much put this together in a weekend with a few bucks and it doesn’t matter if you’re a total “unknown”.)

Unless you’re seeing results it gets harder and harder for your spouse, partner or family to stay in your corner.

I’ll be doing a special webinar covering this topic on Wednesday, October 5th at 12pm ET. There are a limited amount of spots so you can sign up here:

I hope you can make it for this LIVE presentation. (And I’d love to hear your comments on what effect seeing a response means to you.)

[Update: The Webinar link sign-up is fixed now]

Take a look at this example from a few weeks ago:

Betabrands is a somewhat quirky brand that started with ‘cordaround’ pants. (Those are corduroy pants that are horizontal instead of vertical.) So for Flag Day they piggybacked perfectly on the theme by offering 17.76% off their red, white and blue products. (Get it?)

Pretty smart and clever.

Here’s a great example from OoVoo.com, which does group online video chat and competes against Skype in some aspects.

The offer is extremely time sensitive with Skype being ‘down’ (which I didn’t even know until they sent it). The deal is a free day of OoVoo.com for every hour Skpe is down – pretty smart.

With our 24/7 society and constant stream of media attention on breaking news – you should be fleet of foot and click to capitalize on these events for your business.

Sometimes though you wonder if companies might be doing this just for the PR value and not really for authentic reasons that resonate with their brand, their customers or the owners. For instance, I recently came across a campaign for Kentucky Fried Chicken to donate 50 cents for every pink bucket of chicken they sell.

Hmmm….

While I’m all for breast cancer research and help (my Mom died from breast and ovarian cancer) but I don’t see the connection. And I’m not the only one I’ve seen some snarky blog posts about how KFC is trying to use this do-good campaign to gloss over the fact fried chicken could lead to obesity and heart disease. It just doesn’t fit the KFC brand and I cannot see customers really getting behind this in a genuine way. Plus, there already seeing some negative backlash for their “good corporate deed”.

If you’re going to use your business to promote or support a cause there should be a personal reason. Case in point, a recent rose wine I just had produced by former Olympian Peggy Fleming is called “Victories“. Peggy went through a fight with breast cancer and now for every bottle purchased a significant portion goes to breast cancer causes. I like the way this is authentic plus it really ties into the product itself, a rose, since pink has become the color for breast cancer awareness.

Here’s another interesting example that fits the product personality -Elivse and Kreese make high-end luxury goods out of discarded fire hose and other recycled material. Yup I said fire hose!

They’ve also used waste coffee sacks, scrap sail cloth, used air traffic control flight strips, parachute silk and all sorts of other industrial waste. They donate 50% of their profits back to Firehouse Brigade charities and that fits perfectly with their brand and actual product. It’s a beautiful congruent element that once again gets customers talking.

Personally, I’ve incorporated my adventurous personality many different fundraisers including one for Virgin Unite. Me and my buddies, Mike Filsaime and Rob Olic, joined up to do a “Fall-a-Thon” where our goal was to raise $1 per every foot we fell out of the sky. (Oh…did I mention it was from 30,000 feet – the cruising altitude of a jet?)

So the big questions to ask yourself are:

• What causes matters to you and to your customers?
• What is the personality of my product, service or company?
• How does what we do help create zealots to spread our message.

I’d love to hear about different impactful tie-ins you’ve seen that have worked or those that didn’t. Leave a comment and keep the conversation going.

A few weeks ago I attended the INC500/5000 conference and had the opportunity to connect with Ari Weinzweig. I had heard and read a bit about Zingerman’s approach to business and knew it was interesting and different…but didn’t realize how unusual it really was until I dug in.

I attended Ari’s breakout session, had a few conversations with Ari, I read his new book called “A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business” (highly recommended), started researching them, etc.

And the more I saw — the more I really loved how their built their business, the philosophy, the culture and more so I knew I had to get an interview with Ari. If you missed it – please check it out here and leave a comment.

Here are a few of the insights we covered:

• The exact 8-step recipe for writing a vision of greatness and getting clear on the future you want.
• How to get your entire team onboard with your vision and who should create the vision.
• The difference between a mission statement, a vision and a strategic plan (and why there is a HUGE difference)
• Who you should absolutely share your vision with as you’re developing it.
• Why “positive futuring” really does work. (Zingerman’s actually has each employee work on visioning regardless of their position in the company because it’s that important.)
• How often you should re-visit the vision.
• How to “reverse-engineer” your vision and create your ideal future.

Listen to the replay here. Don’t worry there’s nothing to buy though I absolutely, whole-heartily recommend Ari’s new book “A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business“. I think you’re crazy if you don’t add this to your library before after you hear this!

Watch the presentation below (that I’ve never shared with the general public before) and see what you think. Some of the slides need a little explanation but I think you’ll get the main points.

Possible Astonishment Architecture Workshop:

I was considering having a small, interactive workshop with “field trips” to a few businesses that practice this. The workshop probably wouldn’t be cheap since it would extremely intimate and we’d be brainstorming the creation of the Astonishment Architecture individually for your own business. Drop me a comment below and let me know what you think and if there’s enough interest I’ll put it together.

(I’ll be posting some of the highlights and fun pics including a chicken suit skydiving experience)

Now one of the all-new presentations I delivered at our 1-day event covered 6 profitable online trends to pay attention to right now. And this is part of what we talked about for the first trend…

Plugging into the Facebook Network:

This is one trend that cannot be ignored, the Facebook juggernaut is growing bigger and bigger. That’s not really a surprise, but what is trend-worthy is integrated with the wave & using it for your own benefit. One of the easiest things you should consider integrating is the Facebook “Like” button.

In just a few months of being released it’s already spread to hundreds of thousands of sites. And why not? It’s cool and helps you get tap into social traction. If you haven’t seen it yet here’s an example from the Levi’s site:

So if you’re shopping (or anywhere) you can just hit “like” and if you’re logged into Facebook that action will get logged to your wall so your friends can get alerted (creating awareness and traffic). I was playing around with this before my presentation and my Facebook friends saw that I liked toddler’s jeans. Hmmm

Another variation of the like button is to show your friends faces who like the page. This has been tested to have people hit the LIKE button 4x as much as just the thumbs up icon. I also really like the way when posting a message the Facebook setting is automatically pre-checked to post to their wall. So now if I leave a comment on a blog it will show up on my wall and once again alerting my network and creating a viral effect.

We’ve been testing the ‘like’ button with comments on one of our upcoming Maverick Business Adventures Covert Ops bootcamp and it’s already got at least 1 new qualified attendee we wouldn’t have seen without this (Almost $10k – so not bad for adding a bit of code).

And then at the bottom of the page we let people post comments via their Facebook profile. It’s interesting to see the conversation there:

Exponential Social Proof

You can add even more heat to fire when you when you allow your customers to share with their network the action they just took. Here’s what I saw from one of my friends on Facebook after he bought an item from Groupon. (Notice how it created a small conversation and interaction about their brand.)

One person really blowing this up in a big way is my buddy, Mike Filsaime. He’s got a launch for his new AffiliateDotCom program with Chris Farrell and it’s just amazing how they’ve incorporated the Facebook multiplying effect.

Throughout the launch they’ve had their videos available for comments by people through their Facebook account. (We already covered why this smart since it creates the conversation and virally propels it.)

You can see the videos here

Side note: I totally recommend you check them out on 3 different “tracks”. 1) For how they’ve created them – you can see how much proof they’ve put into their videos. 2) For the Facebook viral elements I mentioned and 3) For the content. (The material is really killer especially video #2 and #3. I think you’ll have to opt-in to get in there but do it – well worth it.)

What I really loved that Mike and Chris has done is adding in the social proof of comments from buyers on the final sales video. I guarantee this helped convert some skeptical or ‘on-the-fence’ prospects. When I wrote this post they had over 1,500 people who “liked” their product after buying and have 5 pages of comments from new buyers. That is really, really powerful! You can only post on this particular wall if you’ve purchased. It has a big call-out that says “Look Who Just Joined Only Customers Can Post on this Wall” (WOW!)

This is a powerful concept you should consider applying to your own business. Here’s the link for Facebook developer tools if you want to add this to your site.

And if you want to see some of the other cool things Mike & Chris have been doing with Facebook – watch those videos. I was blown away with the concept with a simple “sidedoor” to finding the right audience for your product or service. Now if you want to get involved in their program, I think it’s closing down tonight at midnight.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing with this idea or anything cool in Facebook – leave a comment.

Bzzzzzz! Wrong!

I think one of the most overlooked aspects in your marketing is naming a product or service. There’s a lot to be said of coming up with the right name that helps propel your business forward instead of slogging along. And when I talk about new names here, keep in mind this applies to domain names and titles equally.

I mean, think about it: in Hollywood, actors have known this since the start. Do you know who Marion Morrisson was? Nope? That’s John Wayne’s real name. He adopted a stage name because Marion doesn’t exactly conjure up a tough guy image. Or Norma Jeane Baker changing her name to the more glamorous Marilyn Monroe.

Here are a few more examples…

Ever heard of a Patagonian Tooth Fish? Sounds delicious, right? Not quite – but when they went with “Chilean Sea Bass” sales soared. Or how about the “Chinese Gooseberry” – wouldn’t you like to have that for a snack? No? Oh, ok then maybe “Kiwi Fruit” is a better name.

Names are quite powerful. Here’s a historical example to prove my point. Originally, the U.S. was protected by its “Department of War”; later they changed to a more peaceful sounding “Department of Defense”. One name brings up the notion that the U.S. is constantly waging war on other countries and (without turning this into a political discussion) renaming it around ‘Defense’ is significantly more palatable – even if the function is the same.

Yes, there is a lot in a name, and I’ll share with you what I consider before I give a name to a new product, service or business. In a haphazard way I’ve known how powerful names can be, starting when I was 16 years old and working with my Father selling medical equipment. We created a private label X-ray film to be sold to our customers and my Dad tasked me with naming it. I came up with “Ultimate X-ray Film” and it turned into a major best-seller.

Now, I got to thinking of names the other day because Missy asked me to help her friend come up with a name for her new speaker management company. She was going to go with her last name i.e. “Sxxlor Management”. Yuck! Boring!

I started thinking about the ultimate benefit a speaker would want. To me, it would be something about moving up to a higher level of fees or being completely booked. So I came up with “Booked Solid Speaker Services”. I thought that was way better and included a serious benefit. I guess not. She went with her generic last name for the company name. In my opinion – big mistake! There’s no differentiation and no benefit.

Since I started really as a copywriter I know that words are incredibly important. Each one has a distinct difference. And if you get the name right you get “branding” as a by-product of powerful direct response advertising for your product or service.

Okay, so let me give you some of my ideas around naming, boiled down to 8 things to consider:

1)      Alliteration – A name needs to sound good being said aloud. A lot of times I like alliteration, like “Maverick Mastermind” with the 2 M’s. A part of this is you need to say your product name aloud and make sure it can’t be screwed up on the radio or in conversation.  Like does “Computers For You” have a number “4” or just a letter “U” in it? I see this mistake a lot for domain names (btw – all this advice holds true for domains.)

2)      Benefit-oriented – Many times I like to use a name that has meaning to it. If you heard it you’d know right away what it is. For my first ‘real’ book, “Moonlighting on the Internet”, there’s an instant benefit with the term “Moonlighting” – it brings to mind a spare time venture and was perfect for my book which is all about 5 ways to make a couple hundred dollars extra online.

3)      Beware of the Web 2.0 syndrome – For some reason after companies like Flickr or Delicio.us got big everybody wanted to create some sort of mildly dyslexic spelling for their company name that seemed cool. (I still don’t know if you spell Flickr with an ‘er’ or not. And I definitely have no idea how to spell delicio.us without looking it up.)

4)      Beware Initials – Yes, some of the biggest companies like AT&T or IBM have gotten away with initials but I wouldn’t hold my breath thinking that’ll work for you too. And why would you – it’s so damn boring. And along the same lines, don’t use a generic name that doesn’t mean Jack. Hmm…was I supposed to call “Capital Paper Solutions” or was it “Senate Paper”?

5)      Use Specifics – I like using numbers, days, etc. My buddy Tim Ferriss’ book has made quite a splash with the title “4 Hour Work Week”. It’s a pretty specific and compelling name. Other works that have sold well just from their ‘specific’ titles include “8-Minute Abs” and “5 Hour Energy”. Personally, one of my best selling eBooks has the title of “33 Days to Online Profits” – once again playing up the specifics here.

6)      Who is the marketplace? The kind of name will help you define who is attracted to your product or service. You might remember years back when ‘Boston Chicken’ changed to ‘Boston Market’. I thought that was a bad idea because it was more generic – apparently others thought so too and it began losing sales. They changed the name back but the damage was done already. Personally, I think more people should embrace tight markets with their name and not try to be everything to everybody.

7)      Is it Trademarkeable? This is an important consideration depending on how big you want to build your brand – but it’s always worth checking USPTO.gov or a new site called Trademarkia.com.

8)      Bonus: Can your name help create unique language? This is a bit more advanced and much of this will come organically if your customers have a high affinity – but it’s something to consider. Look at TED, the conference for Tech, Education and Design. Now attendees call themselves ‘TEDsters’ and have been developing rituals and languaging around the event. (Read “Primal Branding” for more on this notion.) With Maverick Business Adventures® members use the term ‘Maverick Moments’ to talk about a funny incident or story that went on during a trip.

Let me share with you a few of the names I’ve created and give you the thinking behind them.

• Instant Sales Letters: Uses the benefit-driven name with the prefix ‘Instant’ added to the generic item I was selling. This was my very fist $1M+ product and I think the name had a lot to do with it.

As a side note: I’m a big believer in using prefixes or suffixes to help you get the domain you really want. (i.e. Instant, Ultimate, Magic, Formula, System, etc. Names like Autoresponder Magic or UltimateDiscountDomains.com)

• Underground Online Seminar – The term “Underground” immediately brings to mind something secretive so it was a perfect name for our seminar series around real-world people teaching about how they make millions online. (Note: The very best discounts and bonuses expire January 20^th so you don’t want to wait until the last minute to attend. www.UndergroundOnlineSeminar.com)

• Internet Lifestyle – I’ve liked the word “lifestyle” ever since I saw it featured in “Words That Work” by Frank Luntz. People can relate to a lifestyle because it’s different for everybody, and the ‘Internet Lifestyle’ embodies a lot of what I do.

• Maverick Business Adventures® – this was a name I’d worked on for a long time. Originally the name was going to be a “Millionaire Business Adventures” – I definitely didn’t think it had the same ring to it so I kept brainstorming. I liked the ‘MBA’ initials as a play on a real MBA – and that’s when the word ‘Maverick’ stuck.

I don’t think I’ve ever shown this before, but here’s the logo for Millionaire Business Adventures. We were going to have different adventure activities on cuff links but alas I scrubbed it.

Hopefully, you’ll agree ‘Maverick Business Adventures’ was the better choice. The word ‘Millionaire’ comes loaded with some interesting connotations around who millionaires are. I think it’s a good word for something that helps people achieve millionaire status – we own “Maverick Millionaires” and there’s been an ongoing program called “Maui Millionaires” that has done really well. Though for targeting a group of millionaires – I’m not so sure even though ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ seems to defy this.

The ultimate test of your name is your marketplace and you can always test different names using Google Ad Words. That’s what Tim Ferriss did for ‘4 Hour Work Week’ before releasing it. And I did the same for “Moonlighting on the Internet” vs. “Moonlighting Online” as the publisher wanted to call it for brevity.

Here’s an interesting case study – http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/domain-product-name-testing.html

One product name (StockScreener 5.0) performed 17% better than the next best name. They tested 22 different names and the worst performed at 300% worse – just by changing the name. Hmm…maybe you should you shouldn’t choose a domain name, product name or service without running some Google Ad Word tests?

What do you think? Leave me a comment and let me know…

Just back from our Maverick EPIC excursion to South Africa for World Cup, Safari and cage diving with sharks. Pretty awesome! I caught up with the group on the second part of the trip because I didn’t want to miss Zoe’s 3rd birthday. Here is my little princess awaiting her cupcake with Zak eagerly eyeing them from afar…

I hung out with Zo-zoz and then took a red-eye over to London and then hot tailed it over to Cape Town the next day to join everyone else.

By the time I got there I had seen all sorts of photos and videos on Facebook from the Safari at Sir Richard Branson’s Lodge in Ulusaba. The guys were literally feet away from animals and had lots of stories about hippos and leopards nearly taking them out. What’s more, I unfortunately missed a day of teaching the Maverick members conducted at the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in Jo’burg.

But as soon as I landed in Cape Town the adventure started in full swing for me with a scenic helicopter tour taking us out to the Cape of Good Hope and beyond. (Though I have to admit I did fall asleep a few times in the helicopter. The funny thing is I’ve been on one 3 times and have fallen asleep now twice. Hmmm….forgot Ambiens -- just get me to a chopper.) Take a look at this amazing landscape of the Cape before I dozed off:

Later in the afternoon it was off to Table Mountain, which gets its name from its distinctive flat top. Overlooking Cape Town, it’s certainly one of the most distinctive features of the city. And, as Mavericks do, we decided to give it a little adrenaline boost by abseiling (or rappelling) off the summit. Billed as one of the highest commercial abseils in the world, you’ve got a solid 112m (about 350 feet) drop. It was great to see some of the members who had never done this before have the confidence to lean all the way back and let their hands go for their “pre-departure” pics.

As you can tell from the picture here it’s a long way down – especially when there was a little surprise in store for many of us who didn’t see the big drop-off.

The next day was one of the marquee experiences with a Great White cage dive. We literally came face-to-face with one of the most unforgettable and terrifying creatures on the planet in their own environment. A close encounter with a Great White shark is something that will be indelibly imprinted in your mind forever.

We were taken about 20 minutes off-shore to “shark alley” where we dropped anchor and started chumming the water. Of course, during the safety briefing they emphasized to keep your hands and legs inside the cage but somebody had other ideas…

The cages were actually a lot smaller and a lot thinner steel than I would have imagined. Of course, some of the guys started mentioning how on YouTube they saw all sorts of Great Whites chewing through steel cages. Nice!

(

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_EIGI9qFp4

Maverick member Craig Handley got this sweet shot of a shark actually attacking the fake seal they use to lure in the Great Whites.

The sharks were literally within inches at some points, and one time I couldn’t help myself but give him a little quick High-Five on his fin. I don’t think the shark really enjoyed that because he turned around, bit a buoy by Craig’s foot and gave the cage a little ram to let us know who was boss.

There’s a bit of a back story to this, and it all started about 3 years ago on our first ever Maverick experience in Baja when we went gray whale watching in San Ignacio. All the brochures showed people touching the whale. I wanted to do that but I never got the chance. It became one of the running jokes -- but this was my redemption!

The next day was definitely one of the highlights with us hitting the finals of World Cup with Netherlands v. Spain in Soccer City. The gang really got into the spirit with a lot of us going for costumes supporting our favorite squad.

It was a pretty evenly split group with very random reasons for cheering on one country over another. For me, I love Amsterdam so I had to go with Oranje. For other members, it was equally as capricious with Susan Hill deciding the Spanish men were hotter than the Dutch – hence her support for Espana. Tony Ricciardi really stepped up the game when he bought some wonderful bikini brief underwear with South Africa emblazoned on the backside. I think it made us look like super heroes (or just goofballs):

We did have a ton of people wanting to get pictures with us at the stadium and that’s a pretty good showing considering some of the other awesome costumes we saw. Everything from neon orange tuxes to big, furry orange overcoats. I have no idea where these Holland fans find this stuff – but man, were they into it.

I had followed the World Cup at home watching most of the games and some of the biggest news was the annoying vuvuzelas. On TV it sounds like an angry swarm of bees incessantly buzzing. But in person it wasn’t too bad. I had some ear plugs all ready but didn’t need them. In fact, there is some good rhythm to people playing them and it made the atmosphere that much more unique.

I tried to make sure I soaked in every second inside Soccer City. It was so cool to have gone from watching and following the World Cup online to actually being there in person for the finals. Plus, I’m excited that this adventure also got 2 more items checked off my Ultimate Big Life List.

I think this picture about says it all for the flight back to Cape Town. I think we arrived at like 5:30 in the morning…and after being up nearly 24 hours everybody was all tuckered out! Ahhh!!!

I have to mention the airline we flew on – Kulula. I’d never heard of them before but they’ve got some fabulous marketing. Some serious personality and fun built into their business. So here’s a marketing lesson…

Cheeky Ambush Marketing

Kulula Airlines is one of the low-cost airlines in South Africa and they definitely don’t take themselves too seriously. They had everyone laughing during the pre-flight safety briefing, talking about how there are special seats with more leg-room off the wing if they dismantle or tamper with the smoke detectors in the lav, etc. Really good stuff. I remember when SouthWest Airlines was getting accolades for their witty service – but these guys take the cake.

Here’s a video of what an announcement is like on this flight:

What’s more, the airline uses their actual planes to get people talking. I immediately noticed this airplane out on the runway and had to photograph it. It’s their “flying 101” scheme with arrows and witty copy pointed to different parts of the plane. Here are just a few of the call-outs:

• black box (which is actually orange)
• landing gear (comes standard with supa-fly mags)
• tail (featuring an awesome logo)
• loo (or mile-high club initiation chamber)
• co-captain (the other pilot on the PA system

This is a perfect example of Astonishment Architecture™ put into place before you have an interaction with the customer. This was such a unique design that literally hundreds of thousands of people (or millions, according to other web sites) had seen the plane. It got the conversation going and propelled it – which is exactly what you can do by doing things a little differently.

Another big marketing bonanza for them was entering the conversation already going on inside the heads of everyone around South Africa during World Cup time. Here’s their full-page ad with the event-that-must-not-be-named:

This was, I’m sure, a calculated marketing push by the airline which they thought may draw the ire of FIFA for trying to ambush or sidestep one of their official sponsors or profit from the World Cup on the sly. And that’s exactly what happened with threatened legal action – which only poured more gasoline on the fire for even more publicity. Kulula then took it a step further and publicly “apologized”. And in their peace offering they said they’d fly Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president all around the country for free.

The next wrinkle was Kulula “found” a boston terrier named “Sepp Blatter” and has consequently flown him around the country.

Then their next strike was a follow-up ad to make sure there was no possible inference to the World Cup but it definitely was in their cheeky sort of way. At the top of the page you’ve got something that might look like a vuvuzela, but the call-out says: “definitely, definitely a golf tee.” Then there’s the man who appears to be playing soccer, but thank goodness -- we are assured he’s actually doing the hokey pokey and “putting his right foot in, his right foot out”. I love it!

Kulula Airlines also knows the power of strong customer service stories to spread their message. If you saw Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, keynote our Underground® seminar you might have heard him reference the funeral story. The short version is a woman ordered a pair of boots from Zappos for her husband. Tragically her husband died the same day the boots arrived and she called Zappos to return them. The Zappos customer service rep took it upon themselves to send flowers to the funeral and this became a major story in support of their company values of customer service.

Here’s Kulula’s version during the World Cup. They had a Japanese passenger who had somehow ended up with his ticket couriered to the wrong city. Kulula went above and beyond to make sure the ticket arrived in time for him to attend the match and enjoy the World Cup. Bravo! The full story is on their Facebook fan page.

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At the recent Underground® 6 seminar I got handed 2 of my favorite business cards. (Trust me, in a room of marketers it’s not always easy being distinctive without being going over the line.)

The first is from Lt. Prescott Paulin. Prescott is a well respected marine who is a founding father of the Marine Corps non-profit organization Semper Fi House SemperFiHouse.org. And he’s also the founder of www.Your.vu – which successfully launches products in the Internet space.

Now get this – Prescott’s card is a real 2-dollar bill!

Okay that’s unique by itself since we don’t often see those but what really made it stand out is Prescott has folded the 2-dollar bill into a shirt, origami-style. Take a look:

And then when you open up the shirt you get his contact info that looks like a shirt tag. Wow!

Ok so who’s going to throw that away, right?

And then the second card is an example of a really cool way of building on a personal brand and truly being distinctive. It’s from our esteemed event photographer, Jared Polin.  If you were at the Underground® 6 you’d definitely remember Jared because of his massive hair.

Here’s Jared with one of our young entrepreneur scholarship winners, David Orr. (I’ll give you 3 tries to guess which one Jared is)

His wild hair is part of his “brand” which makes his business card so damn perfect.

So what is his card? It’s a hair pick – Kablamo!

The thing is Jared has some serious photo credentials going on tour with rock stars like Perry Farell (I was a huge Jane’s Addiction fan growing up) and bands like Cold Play. We were lucky to have him do some of the shots for our event.  If you need some high-end photography contact Jared at www.JaredPolin.com.