I’d imagine you’ve heard of Tim Ferriss, right?

He’s the author of the #1 best-selling 4-Hour Work Week that really made a huge impression on so many people. Tim and I have known each other before the 4-hour success and the guy has always been fascinated with experiments and “life hacks”. (Oh, and random 80′s break dancing too – but that’s another story.)

Tim’s latest project, The 4-Hour Body, has been the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. From Olympic training centers and NASA scientists to black-market laboratories, from Silicon Valley to South Africa, Tim’s been fixated on one life-changing question:

“What are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results?”

Imagine if it’s possible to —

• Reach your genetic potential in 6 months?
• Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours?
• Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing? (Hello? The Holidays are a perfect chance to experiment with this.)
• Reverse “permanent” injuries and much more.

In fact, there are more than 50 topics covered, all with real-world experiments, many including more than 200 test subjects. This is one of the reasons Wired magazine has called Tim “The Superman of Silicon Valley” for his manipulation of the human body.

I got Tim on the line and grilled him about these optimal tweaks. Yes, this wasn’t the typical business-oriented teleseminar I normally put on but the topic was one that I believe can have a significant impact on your life (hence — your bottom line) that it’s too important not to make happen. (Though I did slip in a bunch of questions around personal productivity and even how to create a top blog that Tim answered.)

And in case you’re wondering if this is some thinly veiled ‘pitch’— sorry to disappoint. Of course, Tim mentioned his new book The 4-Hour Body that’s already a best-seller. (There is a special deal for a lost chapter for our readers – if you pick up 3 copies of the book and send the receipt to yanik@fourhourbody.com – they’ll get it off to you.)

To listen to the exclusive interview please click the links below

Yanik and Tim, Part 1

Yanik and Tim, Part 2

Yanik and Tim, Part 3

To download the whole audio file in a high quality mp3, please right click this link and choose “save as” to save this file to your computer. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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!

The other night over cocktails and with a few sharpies I was doodling away some of my business and marketing concepts on bar napkins. Check ‘em out -

Napkin business idea doodle

What do you think? Would you buy a book of Napkin Business Wisdom drawn on real napkins?

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think and if you got some names for it. The best I came up with is “Bar Napkin Business Plans”.

As you may know I’m a huge fan of lists and especially, what I call, Ultimate BIG Life Lists. (You can see a lot of my list on the right-hand side of this blog actually.) I’ve put together a cool new eBook to help anyone start their own list with a bunch of fill-in-the-blank subject templates. I find it a lot easier to just jot down your “Top 5″ adventures or whatever than to start from scratch.

So please download the free ebook (there’s not even an opt-in required) and tell a friend. I’d love to hear your comments on the eBook and drop me a note when you get some of your coolest items checked off.

P.S. I just completed another item on list by doing an Aquarium Dive at the Baltimore Aquarium. Pretty cool experience. This is a pic of me pouring sand on the fish in the Atlantic Reef exhibit – they loved it because it cleans their scales! They just float there – very neat.

Phew! We just closed out Underground 6 this past weekend with 460+ attendees from all corners of the globe. I truly believe it was THE best event we’ve done yet.  Especially if my car loaded up with thank you gifts, wine and food was any indication from the attendees. (Note: If you missed it we’re holding a “biggest takeaways” call this Monday)

One of the trends I’ve been seeing and paying attention to is ‘transparency’. It’s certainly one of the Web 2.0 buzzwords but something I believe is actually shifting the playing field. I asked Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, once during a Maverick adventure if he was ever worried about going out and having so many digital cameras, video, etc. around him as CEO of a $1B company. He replied that he wasn’t since he wouldn’t do anything out that he’d be worried would come back. Zappos is a big believer in transparency since they have an always-on stream of public mentions, employee tweets, etc right here.

Having transparency means you cannot simply broadcast your message anymore but anyone can have their own voice and ‘interact’ with your brand. That’s the good, bad and sometimes ugly.

This year we added even more transparency to our event with a live tweetstream of the hashtag #UG6. Mari Smith, one of our speakers from last year, gave me the idea and I thought it was great until about 15 minutes into the conference we had a heckler. This anonymous guy or gal decided he would harass, belittle and spout inappropriate tweets using our hashtag. I hate to admit, it really bothered me at first. In fact, I asked our tech guy if there was a way to simply remove this one person from our stream but they said no. I asked Derek Johnson, one of our Young Mogul speakers and a big social media power user, for any tips and he said the community will take care of it.

So I let it go and actually journaled about it at night.

I came to the simple realization that I could only control one thing – and that’s how great of a “product” I put out there. That’s it. It always comes down to personal responsibility and what we can and cannot control. I had dozens and dozens of attendees gushing to me about the event and I decided I’d let the community police itself as Derek suggested. And that’s exactly what happened with a few people deciding to interact with our nameless friend. It just amazes me the kind of energy someone like this would expend to simply bring others down but that’s their own situation.

The next morning, I told the entire audience exactly what happened and my feelings on the matter. In fact, it turned out to be a great lesson in transparency and where things are headed (or have already arrived). Because frankly anyone with a gripe gets a voice and if there is a legitimate reason for his gripe others will band together.

In fact, you might remember the recent situation with a band called ‘Sons of Maxwell’ and lead singer Dave Carroll who had his guitar broken by United. He didn’t get any help or compensation and decided to create a YouTube video about it. Well this attracted major PR coverage and United looked pretty bad. United probably would have loved to be able to put a lid on this story and their own spin on it but not in 2010.

There is proven scientific evidence on how journaling can make you happier.

This is pretty cool…and something that can take less than 15 minutes to get results. I’ve been journaling on and off for years now but not doing everything I could to maximize happiness from it because I didn’t know all the pieces. Just stumbling onto this process myself I had it pretty close but now I’m really going to turbo charge it based on evidence from a new book. (btw that’s one of my journals in the pictures – yes I doodle a bit!)

On a flight home from Atlanta I polished off a new book called ‘59 Seconds’ by professor Richard Wiseman. In there Wiseman has taken the best of peer reviewed scientific studies in areas from persuasion to happiness to parenting and provided bottom-line insights that can quickly create results. (Side note: It looks like I’ll be interviewing Prof Wiseman soon and will keep you posted on that.)

You’ve probably heard previously about journaling but either thought it was too easy, too silly or just didn’t know how to do it. Same with me. But trust me, it works.

There are a five main types of journaling that Wiseman discovered to affect happiness the most; 1) Expressive writing 2) Gratitude 3) Describing perfect self 4) Affectionate writing and 5) Progressive review

Expressive Writing: The first one involved an experiment with people talking about negative experiences versus writing about it. The difference was significant. Journaling about an issue or thoughts was proven to provide an increase in self-esteem and happiness.

The process of “expressive writing” helps to put a story line to what you’re feeling. When the thoughts roll around in our head they just keep surfacing, being ignored (perish the negative thoughts!), pushed back down, resurfacing, jumbling, etc. So write about it. I’m not sure if typing will be the same – but paper and ink is probably best.

Gratitude journaling: I’ve done this for awhile now in spurts and I always find it absolutely amazing especially when things are going well! Write down absolutely everything you are grateful for. Once again sounds dumb but it’s been scientifically proven to make us feel better. And I really do mean everything. Spend 15 min and you’ll come up with some good stuff. All of us seem to quickly adapt to any changes (good or bad) so focusing on what we’re grateful for slows us down to appreciate it.

Describing perfect self: Wiseman cited experiments that showed people where happy when writing and describing a situation that went well from the past. Think back to a time when things went extraordinarily well and put that experience on paper. This is something new that I’ve never done. I’ve certainly wrote about the perfect future but never written about past experiences that went well.

Affectionate writing: A study out of the University of Arizona proved people gained happiness when writing to someone they love and what they meant to them.

Progressive review: Write down everything that is going right. As humans we’re easily more focused on the shit that goes wrong then we are with what goes right. Then we just focusing on what else is wrong…and what else…and what else. Creating an every building flurry of negative observations.

Write down all the things are going right and the progress you are making. Dan Sullivan also talks about this in Pure Genius with the analogy of the Horizon. About how we are not upset we can never reach the horizon if we are driving or walking but somehow we want to reach our ideal. But the ideal is a moving point just like the horizon – that’s why it’s important to focus/reflect on where you’ve been and how much progress you’ve made…and that always build up confidence and positive thoughts.

I’ve incorporated this into our Maverick Multiplier™ worksheet (you can download it for free). The worksheet starts with you having to identify the top 10 things that have gone right in your business and your life.

Please realize this is not some fortune cookie wisdom but actual peer reviewed scientific experiments proving this stuff works! Drop me a comment and let me know what you think or if you’ve used journaling.

Nearly all the successful people I know give back. There’s a special kind of satisfaction that comes from helping and serving others. Entrepreneurs are some of the most generous and giving individuals I’ve been fortunate enough to associate with.

The Maverick Method of Giving Back More

A lot of people talk about how they want to donate some huge sum of money to a charity or their church but then never get around to it because they feel like they don’t have enough right now or it’s not the right time. Frankly, I think it’s because it is not a systematic, regimented giving plan. If you would have told me a few years ago I’d regularly be giving $10k, $15k, $20k+ checks to charities I would have thought you were crazy because I could use that extra money myself for something. But when it becomes just a way you operate it’s much easier to start writing those checks with big zeros behind them. My dad thinks I’m nuts when I told him how much I donate but I’m more that pleased with my decision.

Where I Found This

One of the first times I heard about this was from the late Foster Hibbard, who worked with Napoleon Hill. Foster talked about setting up a “giving account” and a “wealth account”. The set-up was simple. You would take a fixed percentage of all money that comes in to you (i.e. 5%, 10%, etc) and put that amount into both accounts each time you received it. I only do monthly – but this follows the “pay yourself first” philosophy of getting rich also. So each month 5% gets paid off the top – no matter what – to myself (for investments and buying assets, not toys) and 5% gets paid to a charity of my choice. (Dan Kennedy worked with Foster Hibbard and has a great distillation of this and his own wealth building philosophy in his book “No BS Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs”)

Fact is, I could see significant jumps in my own income once I started this 5% charitable giving. Some of the wealthiest and most successful people of all-time had discovered this secret. It’s been said that Rockefeller walked around everyday with a roll of dimes and gave them away. Carnegie was one of the biggest philanthropists building public libraries. Many people talk about the ‘filthy rich’ or how ‘greedy’ rich people are – I’ve found just the opposite. Most of the truly wealthy and successful individuals are some of the biggest & most generous contributors around.

One perfect example I know personally is Frank McKinney. The Wall Street Journal refers to him as “The Daredevil Developer and Real Estate Rock Czar”. Frank builds these mega multi-million dollar mansion in Florida on speculation (meaning there’s no buyer before he builds it). And the guy plays just as hard for charity. He founded the Caring House Project Foundation to build self-sustaining housing and communities for the desperate. (I’ve got a special bonus transcript with Frank of an interview we did together at the end of this post.)

I firmly believe you cannot out-give the Universe.

If that statement is true then anything you give out comes back to you in kind multiple times. Meaning from a pragmatic standpoint you could look at this really as a return on “charitable investment”. But that’s almost too logical. There’s an incredible feeling from knowing one check you wrote sustained an entire village of entrepreneurial upstarts – like when we donate to Village Enterprise Fund. Or when you get a handwritten note from one of the charities you support talking about how surprised they were to get a $15,000 check out of the blue and what kind of help that means to their program.

Personally, I do due diligence on the charity I’m going to support for that particular month and then I write the check without expectation of what is going to happen with the money.

Time, Talent & Treasure

One of our Maverick members has a saying that I love, and that’s, “You can give time, talent or treasure.” So perhaps if you’re short on finances give some of your time or talent away. Quite frankly, for years now we pretty much only donated money (treasure) since that’s what I had the most abundance of. Today with the Young Entrepreneur sessions we run on Maverick trips and virtual mentorship we have the opportunity to actively engage and give forward. Previously I would donate to a lot of different charitable organizations but now I’m pretty much focused on my passion around young entrepreneurship.

Making a Difference Around Your Passion

At a recent Summit Series in Aspen I got the chance to meet Ethan Zohn. If you watched Survivor you might remember him as the $1,000,000.00 winner. Ethan was a professional soccer player in Zimbabwe before appearing on Survivor. He witnessed first-hand the ravages AIDS had on the African people and wanted to do something – but didn’t know what. After winning Survivor he had the means and a bit of fame to create an educational program with professional soccer players educating children and teens about AIDS through experiential learning called Grass Roots Soccer.

In Africa, soccer players are some of the biggest heroes for the kids growing up and this makes for a perfect vehicle for spreading awareness and educating. Ethan’s non-profit has impacted over 220,000 kids and growing. With World Cup coming up next year in South Africa, his charity was selected to be engaged in bigger outreach programs throughout the continent.

He took his passion (soccer) and turned into something that made (and is still making) a tremendous difference for a serious epidemic.

Real Time Fund Raising

I’ve got to tip my hat to my friend and Maverick member, Chris Zavadowski. He did a great job really exceeding his goals with a fundraising effort for Charity Water a few weeks back. He put together a cool webinar I was on with a few Internet experts sharing what they’re doing now and throughout the event he asked people to tweet or Facebook about the donation page.

He ended up raising over $20k and significantly blowing past his initial goals, and a lot of it was similar to the old telethon models. Charity water had a great tool where you could see in real-time what the donation amount was. This type of social proof caused others to donate or previous donors to re-commitment and donate more to reach the next goal.

You can see from this screenshot – one tweet got a $1,000 donation from fellow Maverick member Mike Hill. Plus the fact that Jeff Walker promised to match any donations that came during the time he spoke – it really upped the ante.

Buy One Give One

I’ve really been inspired lately by Toms Shoes with their simple giving model. When you buy a pair of shoes for yourself – they donate a pair to a child in need. Easy to understand and truly impactful. In just 3 years they’ve already donated 150,000 pairs of shoes.

In Aspen, I also had the chance to meet Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson from Feed Bag. The story behind Feed Bag is pretty inspiring too, but there’s a bigger lesson I’ll share in a moment. Lauren Bush was a student at Princeton University when she saw that the UN World Hunger program was looking for a student spokesperson. She applied and went to work first-hand with a program that delivered meals to impoverished children in third world countries. From that on-the-ground experience she was forever changed and wanted to make an impact. She had the idea of combining some of her fashion contacts she made as a model with this idea of charitable giving.

Her idea was simple but profound: create a fashionable bag that people would want that also feeds a certain amount of children per year – hence the name FEED bag. The only problem was that the UN is not an entrepreneurial venture. They didn’t get the concept of selling at retail to donate a percentage for a specific cause. Lauren had a deal set-up with Amazon.com, but they needed a vendor name for the application; so she enlisted Ellen from the UN, a kindred spirit, to create a company on-the-fly for this.

From that small beginning Feed Bag got sold in Whole Foods and has ended up raising over $2.4M+ for the hunger program – enough to cover the entire Rwandan program by itself.

Now the big lesson. Feed Bag is actually a for-profit enterprise with a social conscious. I love the idea of creating something (that’s wanted) with a by-product for good, i.e. buy a fashionable bag and feed 10 children. There is no guilt involved – like many charities play on – however, there are is strong psychology at work. The bag is very prominently printed with the words FEED on it and it gives the user a feel-good story to tell others. Plus anyone else who knows what the bag stands for will recognize the person as having a social conscious. Win-win.

To me, what I find even more exciting than giving a percentage is having a tangible result instead of a percentage charitable donation. With the FEED bag, you know that for 1 bag bought you’ve fed 10 children. This is a BIG idea!

We saw this a bit with the one laptop per child program but I don’t think that was that big of a hit because not too many people wanted the laptop for themselves or their children. The Feed bag and TOMS shoes are “cool”.

This tangible and specific charity by-product of a sale got me thinking. In fact, in our painted picture, I reference this. We’ve already started this Maverick Business Adventures where for each member who joins we donate to Village Enterprise Fund and fund 3 micro businesses in East Africa. And we want to do this even more with a specific product that is tied into a specific charitable action.

* * *

As I mentioned, I wanted to give you the transcript of a special interview I did with Frank McKinney. It’s quite long so I’m going to include it in the PDF when we compile all 5 parts of this blog series.

We’ll let you know as soon as the PDF version of these posts is done. To make sure you don’t miss it sign-up on the upper right-hand side of this page for blog updates.  And if you want even more on the philosophy of “Make More, Have More Fun and Give More” – check out the ‘Maverick Manifesto’: http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog/ramblings/maverick-manifesto-video/

** Update**

You can now download this series of blog posts (and the other posts they refer to) here. http://www.surefiremarketing.com/decade/

Will you do me a favor?

I’ve asked my friend, Gary Vaynerchuk, to keynote the upcoming Underground 6 seminar in March. But the rub is that it’s the same weekend as SXSW in Austin – where he’s also supposed to be speaking.

So to make it worth his while, we made a little bet…

The deal is if I move 500 copies of his book “Crush It“  he would change his schedule and come down to DC.

So why do you care?

Good question.

As you should know from older posts here, I’m not above ethical bribery to make it worth your while and help me win the bet.

There are 3 ways you can help. And at the same time, I’m going to do some cool stuff for you. Please watch this 4 min video explaining the bet.

BTW – if you don’t know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, he made a name for himself with WineLibraryTV.com, which at last count had 90,000+ viewers tuning into his daily wine rants. But more than that, he’s become a hallmark for personal branding and using Web 2.0 to really connect to your audience in a big way. The guy is pretty incredible!

(Update: Way #1 is complete so I need your help with way #2 and #3)

One more thing, my buddy, Jeff Johnson released some killer Word Press software right here. If you’ve got a WP blog  – you’ll want to check this out. (Oh, did I mention it’s a freebie too?)

We’re going to be using for our blogs too.

http://www.SurefireMarketing.com/wpsoftware

Nearly every successful entrepreneur I know has gone through or has grappled with burnout. I think by nature entrepreneurs are inspired, passionate and many-times a bit (or a lot ADHD) and all of this contributes to a feeling of malaise or burnout.

I’ve personally gone through it and come out the other side several times and many of these 4 techniques have helped me. (Note: This is a highlight of the 9 ways that I just shared with Maverick Business Insider members.)

1. Truly Disconnect – In a world where we are constantly tethered to our blackberries and ‘Always-On’ connections there’s something magical about truly disconnecting.

That doesn’t mean I’ll ONLY check emails in the morning – but truly and totally being out of touch. On a recent trip to Baja I did something that might seem a bit over-the-top. I completely ‘black holed’ all my emails during that week. Meaning – I had them all deleted with a note directing people emailing me who to contact for help or support while I was gone and then asking them to email me again after my return if they needed. Most people would be scared to death to do this in case something incredibly urgent comes through and is missed. Oh well.

How many times do you come back from vacation even more stressed out because you’ve got 2,313 emails sitting in your inbox? As you are sorta disconnecting there’s always a tiny voice in the back of your head replaying over and over again, “Wow! I wonder how much email I’ll have to catch up on. I wonder what’s going on?” By totally cutting this off you free up more “Psychic RAM” in your head.

2. Refocus on your successes – Many times the feeling of burnout occurs because things are NOT going “right”. And right is a relative term in relation to what we believe it should be. (Now I have my own crazy notion that everything ends up ‘right’ – for whatever that means – in the end anyway.)

Instead of focusing our energy on what’s wrong – which only creates an endless spiral of more and more negativity – I believe it’s important to change the focus. Take out a piece of paper and start making a list of every “victory” you’ve had during a certain time point. It could be this quarter, this month, this day, etc. Once you adjust your focus your selective perception kicks in and you’ll see there is significantly more that’s good than bad going on. (You might or might not have noticed this is a variation on being grateful. Your gratitude connects you back to the source of your original success.)

3. Set a big vision that you cannot achieve on your own – I admit, I’ve only just started doing this but it leads to a real powerful change of direction, intention and motivation.

Perhaps you’ve heard of a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” or BHAG coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. This is the kind of goal that gets teams rallying around it and lets people transcend what they thought was possible. One famous example is Microsoft’s original goal of “A computer on every desk and in every home.” When you create a big vision or goal like that – you’ll find people getting on your team to help achieve it. My friend, Tellman Knudson, has set the goal of raising $100M by running across the country barefoot. I think that fits the bill.

Our company’s 2020 goal is 3-fold:

1) Motivate, inspire and educate 1M young entrepreneurs to start their own ventures.

2) ‘Mavericktize’ 1M successful entrepreneurs to ‘buy-in’ to the philosophy of making more, more fun and giving more.

3) Have 1M cumulative items checked off entrepreneurs BIG life lists.

And the ultimate goal is to “Change the Way Business is Played”. To me that means bringing more fun into business and never doing things the same way it’s been done. It’s something that can inspire me (and our team) out of funks.

4. Get back to the fun – Think back to when you were a kid and what activities or interests got you really jazzed and excited. Somehow as ‘adults’ many of us have lost that sense of fun and inspiration. What did you like to do? For me, it was playing sports, drawing and making people laugh. That’s why I still play ice hockey and beach volleyball. Why I’ve taken art classes and stand-up comedy classes. I make sure to incorporate what gives me enjoyment into my life by actually making it a priority.

How many times have you heard yourself saying, “I’d love to ___ BUT I can’t because I’m too busy.” That’s total bullshit. What you’re really saying is that activity does not have enough priority in my life. Or I feel guilt around having fun.

Quite frankly for most entrepreneurs work is our default unless there is something else scheduled. Don’t just settle for enjoying life when you squeeze it in between your business. Here’s a great quote from Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, New-York Times Best-Seller “The Power of Full Engagement”:

“…the richer and deeper the source of emotional recovery, the more we refill our reserves and the more resilient we become.”

Put fun activities, rewarding experiences and exceptional adventures on your calendar and protect them like you would any ‘real’ appointment.

Quite frankly, the inspiration for Maverick Business Adventures came from a period of my personal burnout and ironically the unique nature around it can help other entrepreneurs avoid or recover from burnout. I hope you’ll give some of these ideas a try when you’re feeling burnout occurring or when you attempt to break free from it.

Ahhh….

That’s the sound of me exhaling.

Some of you know I play hockey and I’ve been a huge Caps fan for 23+ years starting with my Dad taking me when I was 13 to the games. I was there for the highs and the lows. The heartbreak vs the Islanders and also the incredible Dale Hunter overtime goal vs. Philly. Plus the Stanley Cup sweep (I try not to think about that.)

It was pretty awesome in San Diego this past weekend when my brother, Jeff Johnson, Todd & Ashely Dickerson joined me to watch game 6 at 11 AM, PT. For every Caps goal we started buying the entire bar shots chanting C-A-P-S…Caps! Caps! Caps! It got out of control fast but we loved it with a 5-3 Caps Win…heading to Game 7 back in D.C.

The Caps had to come from a 3 games to 1 deficit to beat the Rangers in 7. playoffs in 11 years and they haven’t won a game 7 in 21 years. Ouch!

My gift to my Dad was front-row seats behind the Caps bench for game 7. And Missy was a real trooper since it was her birthday on Tuesday and that ended up being her bday present.

The Capitals have finally built an incredible fan base and it’s amazing to see 18,000+ people in a sea of red!

I felt like I had too many emotions going on because of the flat play I was really worried it would be a repeat of last year — but the 3rd period made me feel confident momentum was going our way. Then Sergei Federov’s amazing wrister sealed the deal 2-1 late in the 3rd. For the final 5 minute the entire crowd on their feet – it was just magical.

You can actually see all of us on the front page of the Wash Post and online. – here’s the pic (we’re to the right of coach Boudreau):

Washington Post Sports section front page

So now we play the Pittsburgh Penguins. The NHL is more than excited because some of the biggest super stars in the league will be facing off against each other from both teams. Should be some real fireworks and I can’t wait to chant “Crosby Sucks!” as Ovechkin lays him out.

Now even though this had nothing to do with business there are some lessons I picked up. The biggest one needs a little background on the series and last year.

Last year the Caps had the worst record in the East and a journeyman coach, Bruce Boudreau, (who was also an extra in the movie Slap Shot) came in who helped them believe they could win. They had all the talent they needed but didn’t actually play like a team.  The only way they could make the playoffs last year was to go on a 11-game winning streak for their final 11 games (and they did it). They went down 3-1 in the series against Philadelphia and came back to force a decisive game 7 (again). But last year they lost in OT on a pretty crappy penalty call. Their goalie last year, Huet, held out for more money and they couldn’t get a deal done.

Okay so much for background.

This year the team had their best record ever and won their conference but their goalie, Jose Theodore, was pretty unpredictable at best.

Game 1 against the Rangers the Caps totally out played the Rangers but Theodore let in 4 pretty soft goals on only 15 shots. Coach Boudreau ending up making the pivotal decision of the series by playing rookie goalie, Simeon Varlamov. Varlamov was a 20-year old back-up who was sent to the Caps after our regular back-up was injured. He certainly had been scouted for his immense potential but he had only played 6 regular season NHL games. To have him come in after just one miserable performance by the veteran Theodore was almost unthinkable – but Boudreau made the call and I think that turned the series around. Varlamov was stellar in net leading to victory.

Lesson: Make the hard decisions for a potential big reward. Or take the easy path and settle for mediocrity.