Team Maverick winning the NFTE Ignite Spring Break challenge

A few weeks ago I spent the week working with students from the local DC-area NFTE group. (NFTE is the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship). These high school students had given up their Spring Break in order to help consult me and 2 other entrepreneurs on our business challenges.

The challenge I laid out for them was around our stalled Maverick1Million.org platform for young entrepreneurs. I got a lot of great advice from Sabera, Ivonne, Dion, Autumn, Kalan, Nytiah, Shahara and Percell (thanks guys!) and now I want to take it the next level with others engaged on this project.

And now I’m excited to have our new superstar intern, Adam, who is going to be commandeering this project so the time is right to throw this out again and build the 2.0 version of the site.

I’m asking for help for feedback on the project and potential volunteers that want to be involved. But first let me give you a snapshot of what would be included (as of today):

2020 Goal: 1,000,000 Young entrepreneurs, between the ages of 13-23, impacted, engaged and inspired to create or enhance their own business start-up.

Maverick1Million.org is a FREE multi-media platform for online learning, virtual mentoring, community, funding and idea incubation for young entrepreneurs. It consists of the following sections:

• Maverick Entrepreneur Knowledge Bank –
• Success Secrets Interviews of successful Maverick1000 members and celebrity business icons (i.e. Sir Richard Branson, Tony Hawk, etc)
• Tools and additional resources provided by members and partners (i.e. Dan Sullivan’s thinking tools)

• Maverick Business Blueprints - Step-by-step advice from fellow young entrepreneur Maverick1Million members detailing how to start a particular business. (i.e. everything from a lawn care service, baby sitting business to an iPhone app)

• Maverick Upstart Platform – This allows young entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas to compete for seed capital through crowdsourced funding. Young entrepreneurs can choose to make their ideas public for wider funding or just private for Maverick1000 members to see, fund and virtually mentor them.

• Maverick Idea Incubator – Maverick1000 members and other successful entrepreneur mentors have many business ideas that are not the right fit for their current ventures for numerous reasons. But instead of letting these ideas lay dormant they can be uploaded into the Idea Incubator so young entrepreneurs can then develop them. The affinity for the original ideas would drives one-on-one virtual mentoring and possibly even a full pledged partnership as agreed on by both parties.

• Maverick Q&A – Threaded questions and answers that voted up/down for usefulness about all aspects of business. Becomes a reference guide and living learning tool. (Quora.com or Stackoverflow.com are 2 good examples.)

Why am I building this?
You might be wondering why am I doing all of this? Quite frankly, I believe entrepreneurship is the driving force for innovation, change and value creation in our world. And right now is that incredible golden area where you can start something small and see what happens.

I’ve been incredibly encouraged by research from authorities like the Kauffman Foundation, the largest foundation dedicated to monitoring entrepreneurship. They reported that 2009 had the great number of starts, even exceeded the peak 1999-2000 tech boom.

Now couple that with surveys I’ve seen where the majority of high school students want to have their business instead of getting a job. Plus, mix that in with the social entrepreneurship and “conscious capitalism” I see in many young entrepreneurs ideas and you have an amazing combination.

It’s clear to see entrepreneurship is on the rise but sadly, there’s very little real-world education aspiring business owners would get in school to help guide them.

One of the core DNA’s of my group of Maverick companies is to be that RIPPLE. And what bigger ripple can we create than with the young entrepreneurs. Personally, I get fired up and excited hearing and working with startups.

So if you’re with me, I need some help. In the comments I’d love to hear your thoughts on a few things…

Q: The Name. So first thing first. What do you think of the name? The Maverick1Million name is a reference to the big goal of a 1,000,000 start ups. But we’ve also registered a few other options:

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Q: The Platform. After building a much more complicated version in the first version of Maverick1Million.org I want to create something lean and simple to start with. I’m strongly leaning towards the Word Press platform with a host of plugins that should be able to handle a lot of the functionality I want. If you want to dig deep – here’s a mindmap included the sections and plugins I’ve researched. (The #2 in blue means it would a phase II item.)

I don’t know if WP will be the ideal platform to handle the large volume I’d like to grow the site to – but I’m of the opinion that when we get to that point the site/platform will look different and the needs of the users won’t be the same anywhere anyway. I’d rather get something out quick and see what parts are used and what members say they want more of.

Q: What should be included/deleted/featured? The NFTE students really liked the main parts of the site we had outlined. They also thought there should be some sort of way of incorporating the Maverick Business Adventures into an optional experience for the young entrepreneurs so we would consider using a Meetup.com API for that.

But what do you think?

What are the most important elements to be featured? What should be deleted and/or added? If you were 13-23, what would be the most helpful to start your own entrepreneurial venture inside this platform?

Q: How do you track the success of the young entrepreneurs start-ups? One of the biggest parts of this I struggle with is how would you track and measure the success? To me, if a young entrepreneur made $1from the material – I think they’d count towards the goal.

The working idea would be to have a separate spot these members can post their success and perhaps it’s incentivized by a sponsor. (i.e. prove you made your first $1 and you’ll get a free domain from GoDaddy.) But I’m sure there are better ways. Thoughts? Ideas?

And finally…

Call For Volunteers:

Quite frankly I don’t know exactly who we need or what kind of talents. I’m certainly thinking someone well versed in Word Press and membership sites and cool user interface would be a great start from the tech side! If you are inspired and excited about young entrepreneurship and want to be part of building Maverick1Million.org (or whatever its going to be called) I’d love to hear from you. Just drop me a note at teammaverick1million@gmail.com with your name and what skills/talents you bring to the table. Even if its I’m willing to promote the hell out of this thing – I’ll take it!

And please let me know what you think in the comments and drop me a note if you want to help out. I’ll continue posting on the blog the progress and updates.

It’s been incredible to see so many new companies and products adding charitable components to what they’re doing or even go all the way and back that into their ‘DNA’  as a socially conscious but still capitalistic company. I love it!

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 we held our 2nd annual Maverick Business Insider Summer Extravaganza event for Maverick Global Intrepid members and Maverick Business Insider newsletter subscribers. This 1-day event covered the maverick philosophy of make more, have more fun and give more. (If you weren’t there – you missed out!!)

(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.

I got some cool updates from some of our 10 scholarship winners at the Underground Online Seminar® 5 – but before I get there here’s what nudged me to write this up…

Tomorrow, I’m off on our Maverick Business Adventures® Totally Rad 80′s Road Rally from LA to Napa. (Follow me on Twitter @yaniksilver) for some random pics and observations along the way.) There’s going to be some great footage from it because it’s a video scavenger hunt with teams competing for cheesy 80′s prizes.

Our celebrity business icon guest is John Paul DeJoria, who holds the rank of #261 on Forbes list of World’s Richest with an estimated $2.5B net worth. He’s the co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Hair Care Systems and Patron Spirits Company, however he started with incredibly modest beginnings – even finding himself homeless at times. We are contributing to the Boys and Girls Club of Echo Park, CA in his name. Plus, with October being Breast Cancer Awareness month we are also contributing to another charity John Paul supports, which is Cancer Schmancer started by comedienne, Fran Drescher.

If you’d like some of the priceless info from our Maverick Business Adventures® members – we’ve set up a donation page here. For a $50 donation you get exclusive audio plus some “blackmail” pics to boot!

I’ll be around interviewing a few Maverick members about business topics, tactics and secrets while they’re getting their mullets coiffed. John Paul has a personal philosophy of “success unshared is failure” and this echoes MBA’s commitment to always pay it forward to the communities we visit. From the charitable donations to actually taking the time out from every adventure to teach and mentor young & aspiring entrepreneurs around us. (Note: if you’re around the San Francisco area – this Saturday, Oct 3^rd we have our next free Young Entrepreneur session.)

All of this is part of our 2020 mission -

“To have 1,000,000 Young entrepreneurs, between the ages of 13-23, impacted, engaged and mentored to create their own business start-up.”

I get so excited thinking about the Golden Opportunity, for truly anyone, to get going with their own thing now – but I really feel the most passion around young entrepreneurs. There’s such a low cost of getting started, tons of tools & resources to help you and some gumption.

If you’ve read the book “Micro Trends” by political strategist Mark Penn, there is a trend he identified called “High School Moguls”. He correctly assesses the Internets help in making possible for young “kids” to start making some major money online. In fact, according to a Business Week survey in 2000, 8% of all teens were making money online. Obviously, some were just making a few extra bucks on eBay but many, like the winners of our Underground® scholarship, are doing some really impressive things.

I’ve been getting a few updates from our Underground Online Seminar Young Entrepreneur scholarship winners, who attended the last LIVE event.

A recent one came in from Alex Maroko via an IM:

Not too shabby – before his senior year in college he’s sold over $100k of valuable info online, helped a ton of people and bought himself a convertible. I love it! [Side note: I just did a candid interview with Alex about how he started and what he did to build this business from scratch after attending the Underground®. It was in the latest issue of the Underground Secret Society newsletter. If you hurry you can subscribe and receive that interview.]

Here’s part of our candid interview

Yanik: This is going to be really fun. So we had 10 Young Entrepreneurs between the ages of 13 and 21, I think. And we had 10 scholarships to our Online Underground Seminar, which is a $3,500 ticket, and you got in.
So are you 20 years old now or 21?

Alex: I’m still 20.

Yanik: You’re 20, going into your senior year in college. And what got me really excited was – you and I have IM’d every once in a while and you’ve emailed and kept me up to date on the things that have been going on – and you sent me an IM the other day and said “Hey, I’ve made $100,000 in the last three months selling my products, and now I’m getting ready for my senior year so I’m really excited!”. I was like, “Wow, that’s pretty good!” So I’m sure the people listening and that will be reading this transcript would love to know just a little bit of the background and how you got started. You got started when you were 16 or something, right? Or was it before then?

Alex: Yeah, I was always doing things at a young age. I started training athletes when I was 16 years old, I had my first certification as a personal trainer and things like that. I was a basketball player originally so I was mainly training basketball players when I was younger. When I was 17, I was already training some NBA and pro-level type players. So
I had a lot of experience with that, but I never thought I could take it online or anything like that. Basically I would say it all began in November of 2008. I had a couple of other trainers who were doing some marketing online in the fitness
niche and who were big, like Ryan Lee who is an awesome dude who does a lot of cool stuff there. They said “You should check this out, we’re making some money online. Just give it a shot and see what happens”.

Yanik: Did you know them personally or did you just see them online and see what they were doing?

Alex: It actually happened when I was in college. My first year I went to a different college and was a basketball player. The school was in Florida and there were a couple of trainers who had a gym a couple of blocks from school and I was training there. I started talking to them. I’d be there lifting weights and they’d be up in the office on their laptops all day. I was like “What are these guys doing?” It was kind of eye-opening for me that they were putting their training businesses online all because they were making more money online.

Yanik: Interesting.

Alex: Yeah, it was very interesting. So my eyes were opened and I said “I’ll give this a shot”. So I put together my first ebook – kind of like everyone else, that’s the first thing I did. I wrote the whole thing, it was like 100 pages, in one week, just to knock it out. One of my friends who knew the internet better than me put up a WordPress site and put up a
simple sales page. We were taking orders through PayPal. It was very rudimentary and we probably made something like eight or nine sales within a few months, between November and February.

Yanik: What was the subject, was that on the basketball stuff?

Alex: It was just a book about ball handling, teaching players to dribble better. So I had the niche part down without ever knowing it, so I guess that was pretty good. That was probably the smartest thing I did. But obviously I didn’t know anything about internet marketing at that time. I just thought you put a product up and people started buying it. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? It sounded great, it just didn’t actually work out like that. So that’s basically what happened for the next few months. I wasn’t actually doing anything to drive traffic to the site. If you had told me something about testing, I’d have said “You’re crazy”.

So I heard about the Undergound Online Seminar scholarship offer from a friend of mine. He was like “Dude, you’ve got to apply for this. You’re young and you’re trying to do stuff online and you should give this a shot”. So I filled out an application. And what’s funny – I don’t even know if you know this, Yanik – but I was the 11th person to win a scholarship. Number 10 apparently couldn’t make it and I was fortunate enough to get that last one. Going to the seminar was just a huge break for me. Obviously the speakers were incredible and there was a lot of technical information to be learned, but I think it was definitely the people I was able to meet and the relationships I was able to build that really made the biggest
difference for me. Just talking with people in the lobby and going over ideas. It was just so eye-opening for me at that event, just seeing what possibilities there were for me online. And at that point, once I had that belief that I actually could do something online, that nothing was holding me back, it was just like a slingshot. I just took off. I knew what I was going to do and I started putting all my plans into action for my ebooks.

But the first thing I thought of, there was a guy named Greg Poulis  who spoke at your event who actually lives about 15 or 20 minutes away from me. So we actually So we started talking and I had this great idea: I’m going “relaunch” my ebook that’s been on sale for a few months. So I basically put the whole thing together within a couple of weeks and we
did something like $20,000 immediately the very first week.

Yanik: Okay, let’s back up a little bit. So when you walked in to Underground 5, what were you doing with your ebook business? About how much?

Alex: At that point I’d probably sold, I think, eight or nine books, I think at $14.95. And I think I chose $14.95 because in my head that was the price. I was like that is the most amount of money anyone will ever pay me for anything online. So that was what I’d done up to that point.

Yanik: Okay, so you were still kind of struggling. So then you met a bunch of guys. You were actually on the hot seat, I think, during this lunch that we put on with the Maverick Business Adventures members. Is that
right?

Alex: Yes. At the luncheon I got to go up in front of all of the Maverick Business members. I had like 10 minutes. I talked about business for a couple of minutes and then had everyone firing ideas and improvements and tests and things like that. So that was obviously awesome.

And then after the luncheon, basically right after the hot seat, I stood up and went back to my seat. And a friend of yours, Craig Ballantyne, came up to me. We’re in similar niches, he’s kind of like the top guy in fitness right now, and he started talking to me. We spent probably two or three hours together that whole weekend after that and his entire focus was on
my business. And that was just huge for me. A guy who’s doing so well online in a similar niche to be working at my business for me and planning things out for me for the long term. It’s just so motivating and
inspiring when you see something like that.

Yanik: So you went home from Underground, obviously all excited, pumped up, had lots of ideas, met some contacts. So what did you do then to get this ball rolling so to speak? That was a bad pun to use with ball handling, but… So you met Greg Poulis who was at Underground, talking about launches and relaunches and…

Alex: What I had in terms of internet marketing product: I had a digital version of Mass Control and I went through that in like a couple of days. And it’s not just for launches, but I figured out exactly how I was going to launch it. And then I had all the technical stuff from talking with Greg in terms of how many days it’s going to go, what I’m going to do on each
day, things like that.

Yanik: Tell us a little bit about that. Do you remember your plan?

Alex: Yeah. The launch date I had set up, I think it was April 21st, and I think I got that from your event, maybe 5 or 6 weeks before that. So I had a small time to plan out this entire launch. So it was an April 21st launch, we started the pre-launch on April 14th. We just went with a seven day pre-launch period. I don’t want to jump in too far but when I got back from your event, which was probably very smart of me, was research and start contacting affiliates, JV partners, people I thought had subscriber lists or had a lot of reach to people who would potentially buy my product. So I started contacting people, and I probably found 50 or so people online and I put together a good email and I sent the same one to everybody. I only had something like five or six affiliates who actually took part in this launch with me. I was fortunate that one of them was actually a pretty big affiliate and he’s a really cool guy and he made a ton of sales that week. So finding good affiliates was really big for me.

Yanik: How did you find those affiliates?….(continued in full version)

—Snippet from Interview from Secret Society newsletter. If you hurry you can subscribe and receive the full interview –

Another shining star is Danielle Herb. I think she turns 16 years old in a few weeks! When she came to Underground® she was having some tremendous success working with ADD/ADHD & Autistic children. At the event  she got on the Hot Seat and let the Maverick members dissect what’s she’s doing and give her some direction for how to make it bigger.

And she has – currently she’s working on raising $50,000 by Oct 1, 2009 to secure a world class training facility in Ocala, FL where she will be able to provide free horse therapy to kids. Nicknamed “The Horse Capital of the World,” Ocala lends itself to being the perfect location for Danielle to give support. I just donated and hope you might consider too. Go to www.DropYourReins.com to see what she’s doing.

There’s also Michael Dunlop, who is the 20 year-old son of Maverick Business Adventures® member Barry Dunlop. Michael and Barry attended my recent Millionaire MasterMind group and Michael shared his incredible results from blogging. Once again, one of those ideas that really doesn’t make much capital but can yield some incredible byproducts and revenue. Michael has 2 blogs he actively runs and has become quite a crusader in the Young Entrepreneur space himself with Retireat21.com, IncomeDiary.com and WebDesignDev.com among others.

I really enjoy spending time with Michael and seeing how he’s developing as an entrepreneur. He’s been able to land some pretty cool interviews including Craig Newmark (from Craig’s List) and Gary Vaynerchuk among dozens of other young entrepreneurs and success stories. Michael and I are talking about holding a pre-day at the next live Underground® devoted to young entrepreneurs. The idea would be to bring in these real online whiz kids to share what they’re doing and then maybe do a “Dragon’s Den” style session where others share their ideas and let the Maverick Business Adventures® brainstorm and make them better.

I haven’t decided yet if this is the direction we’ll go – so drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

I want to share with you a cool form I created for myself and have only shared with a few people. I think it’ll have a profound effect on your bottom line, your happiness and your esteem. Seriously! Each Sunday evening I have started using this form planning for the next upcoming week.

(Note: You are welcome to reproduce as many copies as you want but you cannot sell it and you must not modify it.)

maverick multiplier worksheet

You can download it here – maverick multiplier worksheet

Okay now you’ve got it let me go over the different parts of this form with you.

Part I: Weekly Awesomeness Awareness

It’s always easier for us to beat ourselves up and think what went wrong in our business and personal lives. This isn’t the spot for that. Take time to reflect on what went well! The power of gratitude has been proven to elevate our happiness and that’s what gets us into a positive state of mind.

Think about everything that went right this week. What are you making progress on? What’s actually working? Because it’s too easy to fall into a negative, self-defeating spiral when you find something wrong and then more and more things start sticking out about your life and business. Nobody has a perfect business or life – but by bringing positive focus to what’s going well you’re setting up a great week.

Part II: Make More, Have More Fun and Give More Back Section

If you’ve seen any of the Maverick Manifesto video – you know these intersecting 3 circles are the things that really drive me. I think it’s a balanced approach to entrepreneurship and unless we are planning and committing to creating this in our business lives it won’t happen.

I need to tip my hat to Cameron Herold who has been coaching me a bit. Cameron is the former COO of 1-800-Got Junk and helped build that to a $100M organization. One of the simple concepts he keeps stressing to me is creating a “Top 3″ list of most important must-accomplish tasks for the week. If nothing else, you must get these done. It’s a pretty simple concept but powerful. So I took that concept and instead of just being financial related let’s turn the focus on all 3 areas.

So take time before the week starts to think about your 3 most important, proactive moneymaking tasks and also about how you are going to create fun in your life and what you’re going to do to give.

Try this out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Just got back from Iceland for our Ultimate Maverick Viking Experience – it was quite an adventure! The first funny recollection is thinking about how our group was bombing around in a fleet of shiny, brand new black Lincoln Navigators – I think we had like 6 of them in our “motorcade”.

Our drivers were weaving in and out of traffic and basically completely disregarding the speed limits. People watching must have thought there was some dignitary or actual VIPs in there. Nope – just us.

Okay where do I start? So many interesting ‘Maverick Moments’, from the moment we got up on day one to the final good byes – it was pretty non-stop…especially when you mix in a good helping of Reykjavik’s wild night life (which doesn’t even get going til 1 AM!)

Let me try and hit a few highlights –

The first day after our Icebreaker session and lunch we headed out to do some ATVing over incredible lava fields and through swift water.

I tried to get one of our guides to screw with member Chris Zavadowski and tell him that he owed several hundred dollars for damages incurred for bumping me and passing me – but Chris didn’t bite. Damn!

From there we headed to the one of the most famous spots in Iceland, the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon is this huge geothermal spa with supposed healing properties in the mud. At least a few our members, who will remain nameless, fell for this propaganda and this is how they ended up:

And making a big splash was our new VP of Operations, Andrew Way in his water wings in the lagoon.

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Side note: I guess this would be a good time to introduce Andrew. As you see he jumped right into the culture of Maverick Business Adventures. Andrew is actually leading operations and managing all our different businesses so please welcome him (and give him a hard time) when you meet him at an event or Maverick trip. Those of you in the online world might know him since he came from Eben Pagan’s company. I’m finally moving from a one-man band to developing a team. I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts around this evolution soon.

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The next day was the big tectonic plate SCUBA and Snorkel adventure at the Silfra Ravine. Located in the Thingvellir national park, this crack in the earth filled with crystal clear water is the dividing line between America and Europe. It’s a pretty extreme dive with strong currents and 3 degree water temperature – plus add to the fact there are around 300 small earthquakes in the national park.

For me this was like learning to swim by being tossed into the deep end because I’d just got certified a week before this trip (nothing like a deadline, huh?) like a few of the other guys too. Here’s our Maverick SEAL team of members Juan Luis Hernandez, Mike Cline and Mike Geary, ready to deploy into freezing waters:

And then you’ve got the B-team of snorkelers trying to look tough: (From left to right: Tim Schmidt, Andrew Way, Chris Zavadowski, Barry Dunlop, Ash Kumar and Kenneth Castiel)

Kidding (kinda).

I give the snorkelers a hard time because I barely passed my SCUBA open water cert without drowning myself or having a panic attack under the water – and these guys waltz in and enjoy the 300 feet of visibility – which made it almost as good as SCUBA in this instance. There’s a really funny skit if you can catch that Jerry Seinfeld does about SCUBA. Essentially he is swimming around saying, “Look there’s a fish, a rock…who cares…don’t die…don’t die…don’t die.”

Missy was laughing because I went through all this prep to get my certification and there wasn’t even a fish to look at – the water is too cold for aquatic life. But it was pretty damn cool to get in between the tectonic plates. There are some cool videos on YouTube if you type in ‘Silfra Ravine’. Here’s me (with my new Icelandic furry cap) rubbing Chris Zavadowski’s tummy for good luck before the dive:

After the dive we did a little caving inside caves formed by lava flow. Here’s founding member, Aymen Boughanmi, enjoying the fact he’s pretty skinny for some of the tight spots in the cave.

On the way home we stopped at two incredible Icelandic icons – the Gulfoss Waterfall and Geyser. This is the actual “geyser” that gave its name to all other erupting hot springs in the world. At the site there is one extremely active geyser, Strokkur, which sprouts up to 90 feet into the air every 90 seconds. At one point I found myself the unknowing recipient of the explosion. Check out this video that Mastermind and Maverick member John Carter captured of me on the phone with Missy while getting ‘geysered’: http://tweetreel.com/?4st47

The next day we were up and out again with an expedition to Solheimajokull Glacier Tongue for walking and climbing on the glacier. The Glacier Tongue extends down from one of Iceland’s largest glaciers, Myrdalsjokull. We had to stick crampons on our boots and learn a little bit of handling the ice ax. This activity was a little bit of a disappointment since I thought we’d actually get to do some double ax-climbing but I guess we’ll save that for the encore trip to Iceland in 2011. Here are the Maverick members at the (sorta) summit:

And here’s a shot showing a little more of the glacier texture. All the black stuff is volcanic ash from past eruptions in the area. As the ice melts, it creates deep cracks and ravines in the ice surface – trust me, you don’t want to step into one of those babies.

From there we headed to another glacier for a totally wide-open snow mobile experience on an ice-covered volcano. Our guide volunteered info that the volcano we were riding over is actually 20 years past-due for blowing…yikes!

Before snowmobiling the lunch buffet was literally carved out of snow & ice and so were the seats Maverick members were sitting on.

Behind our lunch spot was a nice hill that seemed to make a perfect spot for sledding and I wasn’t the only one that thought so. New member, Drew Regitz, decided the same thing and took matters into his own hands…er ass…and slid all the way down. I grabbed some trash bags and a few members for us to enjoy some old-school, seriously low-budget sledding.

After snowmobiling only a few people were on the inside of a pretty hilarious anecdote with our VP, Tim Warren. Tim decided to try and hijack the Russian missile carrier launcher we came in on. (Yes, we arrived via an authentic piece of Soviet military gear).

To his credit he got it started but then couldn’t figure out how to turn it off before the real driver got back. When the driver arrived nobody said anything and I’m sure he knew he didn’t leave the missile carrier running while we were snowmobiling.

Now perhaps the icing on the cake (okay, a really nasty tasting cake) was the traditional Icelandic dish of “Harkarl” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakarl. Which believe it or not is putrefied, rotting shark. Yup! I saw this on a TV show and knew I had to get it for our fellow Mavericks. You can read up on it at Wikipedia but essentially it’s shark that’s been left to rot in the ground for 9 months and then hung to dry another 9 months or so. It’s quite nasty – but the smell is much worse than the taste. I had 3 pieces because I wanted Kim, our Operations Mgr,  and our one host, Emma to have some. So they made me take pieces with each of them. I was hoping somebody would puke but we weren’t so lucky.

Maybe if we served it first-thing in the morning while some of the members were recovering from the Reykjavik nightlife I would have had a better shot at that. Speaking of the night life – the town definitely knows how to party. It’s funny, during the week the bars close at 1 AM and not many people are out. Come the weekend you’ve got some wild, craziness that goes on til 6, 7 even 8 AM. What I found really wild was people love smashing glass bottles on the street and the next morning a street cleaner comes by and cleans it all up. Amazing!

Here are members Juan Luis Hernandez and Dave Lally doing their best Viking impersonations at night:

Our special business icon guest was Morten Lund, the wild VC investor most famous for investing in 85 high profile tech start-ups including VOIP star Skype (sold to eBay for $4.3 billion). Morten told a fascinating story of his ups and downs and a true no-holds barred business session. He was very candid about his financial windfalls and failures. Many of the members said this was the best business conversation or talk they’ve ever heard because there was no sugarcoating anything..

The final day was capped off by our Young Entrepreneur session held at the University of Reykjavik. Our vice president of Maverick, Tim Warren, put together a fabulous session with about 90 students.

We started with our regular round table discussion about entrepreneurship and then quickly moved into groups giving each group a Maverick member. This was something totally new because we decided to spend a lot of extra time on this day because of the Icelandic economic situation. Here’s member Tim Schmidt whipping his group into shape:

I had my own group and it was pretty cool watching how we brainstormed an entire business idea and really added some outrageous additions to the idea. The idea was something like “7-minute Green Chef” and maybe you’ll hear more about it. But some of the ‘hook’s and unique aspects of it were killer. Our chef would use only fresh ingredients and whip a healthy meal for her family in 7 minutes or less. She would do it live via webcam with a countdown timer going. That way we’re instantly creating content for something she does every night anyway. We’ll let people get an email with the next day’s ingredients so they can follow along live. All of this was about leverage and we brainstormed how to take it from just an info product to a certification program and beyond. Very exciting stuff – but I’m biased since that was my group.

Each group got to get up and ‘pitch’ our members and the audience with their business idea. We had some cool ones like an “Adventure Party Bus” that goes around Iceland to all the cool adventure locations.

Then our Maverick members took some of the ideas and made them better by brainstorming and ‘plus-ing’ them even more.

For each of the winners (via audience applause) we gave away $500 in seed capital for infrastructure stuff (i.e. web hosting, autoresponder, etc) and then they also got some ongoing support from members and myself. (That’s worth significantly more than the $500.)

All-in-all a pretty rewarding and exciting day. At the end of the session, I asked the audience how many were going to go out and start their business ideas and about ¼ the group raised their hands. Pretty awesome! All of this one step closer to our 2020 ultimate goal of empowering and supporting 1,000,000 young entrepreneurs to start their own ventures.

Phew – what an adventure! If you missed it – there are still 2 big Maverick experiences for the tail end of ’09 (if you qualify). The next Maverick experience is the ‘Totally Rad 80’s Maverick Road Rally’ – October 1 – 4, 2009 from Los Angeles, CA to Napa Valley, CA.

Grab your gnarly car, your neon shades, feather back your hair or coif your mullet because we’re headed “Back to the Future” for 80′s-themed Maverick Road Rally experience!

http://www.MaverickBusinessAdventures.com/80srally

Of course as a Maverick event this isn’t JUST a straight trip up the coast. Each day there will be a new adventure starting with your first clue in the morning leading you to your classified route and “80’s missions” to record. Each mission has a point value assigned to it and like a ‘video scavenger’ hunt you’ll have to decide which item you want to capture on film to win the rally. But the only points you are credited for is if you film you mission on tape. The competition-o-rama is going to be fierce for each 2-person car competing for cheesy (yet wonderful) 80’s prizes.

Starting in a mystery location around Los Angeles, CA we’ll motor up the coast to Big Sur, San Francisco and then finally arriving in Napa Valley, CA. Along the way there are lots of surprises from special guests to special exclusive activities like riding a 246-foot long Zeppelin (one of only 3 operating in the world!) and a private ‘cult’ wine tasting dinner at a top Napa winery.

Plus, we’ve just confirmed our special business icon guest, John Paul DeJoria.

Ranked #261 on Forbes list of World’s Richest with an estimated $2.5B net worth. J.P. will be joining us on this first leg of the rally from Los Angeles and sharing his incredible rags-to-riches story. How he went from homeless to billionaire by co-founding John Paul Mitchell Hair Care Systems and Patron Spirits Company.

And then the final 2009 experience is November 6-8th Vegas Air Combat experience…

Imagine being a fighter pilot for a day. You’ll suit up and climb aboard an aerobatic, Italian-built fighter aircraft ready for an authentic dogfight in the sky. You are at the controls and you are actually flying except for take-off and landing (pilot’s license not required). This is the REAL deal, it’s not a videogame or simulator.

Vegas is known for extremes and following Air Combat you’re in for a truly unique dining experience, Forbes magazine named it “one of the 10 most unusual restaurants”, Dinner in the Sky! You’ll be suspended 180 feet in the air overlooking the famous Vegas Strip enjoying a 5-star gourmet meal. Seriously! A crane hoists an entire dining table with everyone securely strapped to the table for a dining experience you won’t soon forget.

But this wouldn’t be a Maverick event if it didn’t keep getting better and better…

Special Bonus Business Icon: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com will be joining us during the ‘Sky’s the Limit’ Maverick experience. Tony has built up Zappos.com from nearly zero in sales in 1999 to over $1B (Yes, Billion with a ‘B’) in 2008. You’ll get a special behind-the-scenes “field trip” to Zappos.com headquarters where you’ll get to see for yourself how Tony’s built an incredible Zappos.com culture founded on customer service to get where he is. He’ll also provide a candid and uncensored presentation on his business philosophy to specific nuts and bolts of heading up a $1B ecommerce giant while still maintaining a small company excitement. (Side not: Tony was also a featured keynote speaker at Underground 5 – the DVDs of that event will be available soon.)

Wow!

I’m back from Necker Island, Sir Richard Branson’s private island…what an incredible experience. Before we get to the stories – the most important part of the trip was to raise money for Virgin Unite. This was our first joint Maverick Business Adventures and Centurion Mastermind trip lead by maverick member, Joe Polish and his partner, infomercial king, Dean Graziosi.

Pictured below are the 3 of us together with Sir Richard Branson holding a check for $447,000.

Maverick Business Adventures and Centurion Mastermind raise nearly half a million dollars for Virgin Unite

I’m incredibly proud of this trip because these funds will go to jumpstart a brand new program helping teach entrepreneurial skills to underprivileged youth across the U.S. Plus, some of the funds will go to support the Branson School of Entrepreneurship in South Africa. (In fact, just got our BETA test of the Maverick mentorship off the ground days before arriving on Necker.)

So what happened on Necker?

Well…on the business side we had an all-access Q&A session with Sir Richard Branson. This is not something we had last year. I shot a couple quick guerrilla videos for you. (Note: Most likely we’ll taking our best brainstorming sessions, exclusive interviews on the island more and putting it out into an incredible product with proceeds going to Virgin Unite.)

I jotted down a ton of notes from the 1 hr+ we had with Richard. Here’s one page from my private journal:

My private journal notes from Q&A session with Branson

If it’s hard to read but here are a few of my favorite quotes from the session:

“Find great people and give them extreme freedom in the short run this will be difficult but it frees you up for bigger things.”

“If you are going to make a difference you have to work hard at making a difference.”

“As you get older you will leave behind your children and that’s your legacy.”

Plus we had a couple powerful brainstorms with the USA’s head of Virgin Unite, Darin Spurgeon and investment relations mgr (former PA to Branson), Nicola Duguid. Branson sat in on the main brainstorm for the Virgin Unite team with some killer ideas coming from attendees.

Then we capped it off with an optional, focused brainstorm around the idea of a group called “Entrepreneurs Unite”, which would let successful entrepreneurs get involved in initiatives ‘powered’ by Virgin Unite. It was exciting to see some of the attendees from last year’s Necker trip report back on the things they’ve done. Everything from donating 25 cents per book sold to planning a $100M barefooted run across the country.

A bit crazy and that’s Internet marketer, Tellman Knudson for you. (I told Tellman I’d be in the chase bus and I’d pay extra sponsorship money if I could throw out nails and tacks in front of him.)

Actually Tellman got married to his long-time partner, Jodi, on the island. You can see their 2 ½ year old son, Torger, napping while this is all going on. Pretty funny and Branson was the ring bearer. You just never know what will happen on Necker.

Tellman Knudson and Jodi getting married

Speaking of what happens on Necker. A few of you might recall last year when I sorta got kicked off last year as a joke. (Read about it here for a recap)

So here’s the letter I got when I showed up on Necker from the General Mgr this year:

Welcome letter from Necker Island manager

Anyway I didn’t see Gordo for several days while there until a fateful Monday afternoon. You see, they got some new golf carts on the island and they are pretty fast. Maybe 30mph or so is the top speed. Anyway, I was late to jump on the boat to Moskito island (Branson’s adjoining island he just bought). I was hauling ass around a blind turn until I look up in shock and see another golf cart bearing down on me. Shit!!

I slam on the brakes but still end up in a head-on collision.

Boom!

I look up and guess who is in the cart? Of course, it’s Gordo. So of course I say, “Hi Gordo, nice to see you again. Thanks for the letter.” Ack!

Nobody was hurt but there was enough force to smash down the bumpers into the tires making both carts un-driveable until repaired. Nicely done. I figured out what happened, he’s British so he was driving on the left-hand side of the road and I was on the right-hand side of the road. Only adding to my rap sheet at Necker.

Good news is I did make the boat to Moskito island and after lunch on the island we competed in Beach Olympics with Mavericks vs. Centurions. Here’s a picture of the tennis ball game played like musical chairs with a few less balls than participants each time.

Beach Olympics on Moskito island

It got a bit heated with me and Dean Graziosi being the last 2 finalists. I have to hand it to him -- the guy is quick. I tried to dive over him for the final ball but mis-timed it slightly. At least the audience enjoyed watch us compete. I am almost embarrassed to admit the Centurions won though I need to take up some gripes with the International Olympic Beach committee considering our group is significantly more athletic but somehow we got on the short end of the stick here. Ah well, always next years rematch.

One of my biggest goals this year was to finally get up on the kiteboard. Unfortunately I did for only about 2 seconds…I’m slowly progressing.

On the final night we had some outrageous wigs and glasses for dinner and dancing. Gordo told our crash story to everyone during ‘Maverick Moments’ and he presented me with my own car for use on the island next time. It’s a kids toy car with ‘Maverick’ on the side and then ‘Yan Man’ on the license plate. Pretty funny. At least they have a great sense of humor on Necker.

I think every Maverick member there has a defining story and hopefully we’ll see even more members next year when we do it again (if they let me back on the island).

I’ve been overwhelmed with the quality of applicants for the Underground® 5 Scholarship Challenge for young entrepreneurs aged 13-21. Applicants came from around the world and just 6 points separated the top 10 and only 11 points separated top 20 so it was really, really close. Each of the winners will be my special guest during Underground® 5 and get the ultimate young entrepreneurs experience there including a special VIP lunch with speakers and Maverick Business Adventures® members. In fact, I just got confirmation this morning that Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, will be attending this luncheon also.

Here is a quick blurb on each of the winners (if you are coming to Underground® 5 please say ‘hi’ to them):

Albert Steven, 21
A native of Indonesia, Albert Steven always had the desire from his early childhood to “do something more”. While his mother consistently reminded him that he must make his own way, she also encouraged him to take the ‘safer’ path. Albert finally relented and enrolled in college. With nothing in the bank aside from his tuition money, he decided to take a huge risk and invest part of it to launch his business. His risk paid off as now his company has grown to 17 outsourced employees and grosses in the low to mid five figures per month. Albert is still continuing his studies as he runs his business part time.

Tyler Lamphere, 20
Tyler Lamphere believes he bleeds entrepreneurship. Both his father and grandfather were entrepreneurial from their teen years. Tyler has found a lot of inspiration from his father who built a successful construction company in his early 20′s. While Tyler dabbles in all kinds of internet marketing related businesses but his claim to fame is knowing the ins and outs of domain flipping. He states that in some cases he has been able to earn profits that exceed 3,000% of a tiny investment after just a week of ownership and for all who attend Underground 5 Online Seminar he will share his tricks of the trade.

Marshall Haas, 19
Marshall Haas loves fast things especially motorcycles. So it is no surprise that after reading Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week he would immediately start implementing a few of the strategies he learned to get his work done faster so that he could enjoy his motorcycle just a little more. Marshall thought of an idea of creating a company that actually integrated outsourcing into the business model. Today his company, inVision Projects, provides architectural renderings for architectural firms, home builders, developers and designers. His company outsources all of the work overseas, resulting in tremendous savings in both time and money for all parties involved in the transation.

Chris Allen, 21
A few years ago Chris Allen went backpacking alone across the USA and met a range of varied and wonderful people. He returned home inspired and motivated but his parents quickly brought him back to the real world as they proceeded to kick him out on the streets with nothing to his name. Doing what he had to do, Chris worked odd jobs to pay the bills and enrolled in college. Then one day he was approached by a former client. That conversation led to the creation of Networkology which provides live online speed networking for businesses worldwide. The software is unique and Chris has written more than 100,000 lines of code to make his dream a reality while he continues to pursue his college studies in BioTechnology.

Patricio Quezada, 17
Patricio Quezada stated that he has changed his business idea 4 times since he formally became an entrepreneur. He said that it wasn’t because they didn’t work but because he had to align his values within himself to successfully enjoy what he is doing. His belief is that this is the key to entrepreneurial success. Patricio’s company provides bilingual technology training to the Hispanic community. He got inspired to start this business because his Spanish speaking neighbors often sought him out for help. When he realized there was little technology support available for the Hispanic community he decided to come out with a line of workshops and programs that were bilingual. He is currently writing a bilingual computer training handbook that will be released in March 2009.

Asantewa Disroe, 14
Asantewa said that her greatest challenge was that older people tend to think that because she is young she does not know what she wants in life. Instead of giving her advice which she listens to and REALLY want they tend to try to tell her what to do. So in an effort to help herself and others she started a fun friendly teen networking site for girls that provides an open platform where they can discuss issues like malicious gossiping, teen pregnancy, sexual predators and family issues. Asantewa also has a line of branded clothing and accessories and hopes that the Underground 5 Online Seminar will help her think of ideas to expand her line of teen empowerment programs.

Danielle Renae Herb, 15
After experiencing an unexpected family tragedy when she was 14 years old Danielle Herb states that she completely understands what it means to live life as there will be no tomorrow. This rally cry is the motivation behind her company which teaches character self-esteem and overcoming fear to children and adults through natural horsemanship and equine assisted learning. Danielle also owns a private school with her mom called “The School Without Walls” where she teaches 5 days a week and does case studies on students who are profiled as ADD/ADHD. She is working on developing a host of programs for them using her natural horsemanship programs. Aside from running her business and teaching, she also cares for and feeds her 9 horses daily.

David Leggett, 20
David Leggett made an extremely powerful statement when he answered the legacy question. He said that he doesn’t want the world to remember him because he is not that important. What he is doing is important and what he is doing is trying to save children who are stuck in terrible situations. David runs a company were he is an independent publisher who sells ad space. His sites see up to 2 million page views per day. And in less than 6 months one of his sites has become one of the largest Photoshop sites online.

Avais Charania, 18
Avais understands what it means to take risks with money being that he started trading stocks when he was just 13 years old. He has dabbled in a few online ventures from eBay to online liquidation of wholesale products but his current business is a network of websites which allows users to convert videos to mp3 format. Avais has a couple of sites that are getting about 50,000 daily visitors and generating some nice little pocket cash while he is pursuing his studies at Penn State.

Radu A., 16 (Pending)
Radu is in the process of getting his company off the ground although he is currently generating 4 figures a month from what he calls ‘personal experiments’. He has learned to earn profits from buying and selling websites and affiliate marketing but he realizes there is so much more to learn. He seeks friendship and inspiration from all across the globe as he comes from a country where barely 5% of the population is connected to the Internet.

I’m incredibly excited to see what happens with this first “batch” of young entrepreneurs exposed to some of the world’s top online marketers. Hopefully one of these winners will be the next Internet Titan and look back on this as a pivotal breakthrough.

Will This Be Your Breakthrough Too?

Quite frankly, that’s the case of many attendees when the come ready to apply what they hear. In fact, I just got a note back from an attendee from 2 years ago who is now doing over $2.8M in his first full year jump-started by information and people he met at Underground®. (As of right now I cannot disclose too much more about the product but it’s in the beauty industry and nothing to do with making money on the Internet.) If are considering coming to the Underground® 5 – the final deadline is February 10, 2009. Hope to see you there.

BTW – I just got back from Baja a few days ago with the Maverick Business Adventures® group and will have some updates (pics/videos) for you shortly.

I’m really excited about this…

For the first time ever I’m introducing a scholarship opportunity for young entrepreneurs to attend Underground Online Seminar® 5.

You see, one of my real passions is helping young people and “turning” on the lights for them to see a different direction in their life.

A few years ago this “kid”, Nathan Morris, from North Carolina emails my office about his situation. He told me he’d read one of our introductory programs and was starting to make about $1000/month online from his college dorm room. He wanted to know if I would meet him for coffee.

Typically I don’t do that without charging a very significant consulting fee but this time I made an exception. Nathan drove up 12 hours for that cup of coffee but he walked away with a game plan to earn 6-figures from his tiny list of 2000-some people. Wait until you hear the niche he sells to — it’s so crazy and it could only work online. Nathan sells to enthusiasts who want to take the engine out a Honda Accord and move it to their Honda Civic to make it go faster! The best part about Nathan’s story is his Mom accusing him of dealing drugs because he started making so much money selling information products after our meeting.

*
Here’s part of what he told me later on:

“I met up with Yanik in Bethesda at a Starbucks after driving 12 hours to meet up with him to turn right back around and drive 12 hours back.  Anyhow, during that hour or two that I spent with Yanik at the coffee shop… he opened my eyes to so many new product ideas and marketing strategies that I honestly—almost two years later STILL haven’t been able to fully take advantage of! I am now making a full time income…and I literally have dumbfounded all of my college buddies since I only work for about 1 hour a day at night before bed. Even more incredible… in my main business, I have taken my income and successfully doubled it each year—and I’m on track to 10x it this year… putting me at over $100,000 a year from a VERY small niche, with a list of only just over 2000 people.” (Note: this was several years ago and Nathan is on to bigger and better things online.)

*

Anyway this was several years ago and unfortunately I really didn’t do very much hands-on help or teaching for young entrepreneurs since then. I’ve always been interested in it but I just didn’t make it priority…until now.

Part of the unique aspect of my new Maverick Business Adventures® group is ‘giving forward’ via education to teach young and aspiring entrepreneurs in communities we take part in adventures. (Actually next week in Baja we’ll be working with a group of Business students from a local University in Ensenada, Baja Mexico.)

So I got to thinking…why not do this with the Underground® too?

The kind of turbo boost a young entrepreneur could get here would be incredible since it has quickly become THE networking and learning event in the online community. (That’s not what I say but tons of others high-profile attendees who never miss it.) I’m hopeful this kind of exposure would help one of our young entrepreneur winners become the next Google, Facebook or Twitter. Who knows? You never know what can happen and this is the best time in history to do it. It’s truly the golden age for creating online businesses from a bedroom, dorm room or living room and I hope this is the spark they look back on as a pivotal point.

These 10 super star young entrepreneurs selected will win the ultimate VIP experience at Underground® 5. Here’s what they get:

•    Free admission to the Underground Online Seminar® 5 to be held at a top-secret location in Washington, DC on February 20-22, 2009. ($2,995 value)

•    Face-to-face networking opportunities at the event with 300+ leading entrepreneurs and top Internet business owners including Ryan Allis, who has built multiple million dollar companies from scratch (one while in his teens), Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com; and Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, the #1 online footwear retailer that broke $1 billion dollars in sales in 2008 & many more!

•    Private VIP Lunch with myself, multiple speakers from the Underground® and members of the exclusive Maverick Business Adventures® group. (Maverick Business Adventures® is a distinct group of 7-figure business owners committed to ‘giving forward’ to young entrepreneurs.)

•    Closed-door learning session during lunch.

•    Exclusive Maverick Young Entrepreneurs Swag Prize Bag (Special resources and goodies from top online experts -  $1000s in value.)

More details here –
http://www.UndergroundOnlineSeminar.com/challenge

If you are aged 13-21 and have the entrepreneurial spirit – I welcome your submission. Or if you know someone who should apply, please forward them this link. Thanks very much! – Y.S.

I probably should have posted this a lot sooner…but a few weeks ago I was in Delray Beach speaking at the ETR Internet workshop and I walked down the road to my friend, Frank McKinney’s treehouse. (Seriously, he’s got a pretty sweet treehouse as an office!)

Quick background on Frank. At age 22, Mr. McKinney founded his first real estate investment company and bought his first $50,000 fixer-upper, selling it a few months later for a $7,000 profit. Now, 22 years later, McKinney continues to create real estate markets where others dare to tread. He has built 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. But where I’m really inspired by Frank is his giving side. He’s created an incredible charity that builds homes for the poorest of the poor in Haiti with his Caring House Project Foundation.

Now Frank is a true Maverick and I wanted to get his take on the 3 pillars of Make More, Have More Fun and Give More Back! (That’s what I cover in the brand new Maverick Business Insider newsletter.)

Let me know what you think.

Also, a quick update -- Underground® 5 is now open. We’ve got a stellar line-up of under-the-radar marketers doing over $200,000,000.00 online including Bob Parsons from GoDaddy.com as our keynote speaker. The best discounts, bonuses and goodies are available right now!