At Maverick Business Adventures we always work on making business breakthroughs and sessions in unusual settings and more fun! (We’ve done sessions on the side of the Colorado River, in air hangers, grass thatched huts in Baja, on Safari with breaks for elephants and more!)

Over the last few years we’ve invented and customized different business “games” to develop business strategies, ideas and interactions among members.

I was really excited when I found the book “Gamestorming” written by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo. I’ve never seen a compilation of the coolest, most creative ways to get teams and individuals engaged and playing. It’s a cool little playbook and they also want to create a community of other Gamestormers beyond just the book. In fact, I just recently posted on the Gamestorming blog adding the wiki one of the games we use at Maverick called “Air Time Mastermind”. Check it out and leave a comment!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheeky Ambush Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Note: If you want to see more marketing ideas that incorporate fun, personality and get people talking...you can get a monthly does inside our Maverick Business Insider newsletter!]

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”.

In a previous post I mentioned one of my favorite success secrets has been creating authentic connections. And one of the things that gets the ball rolling is being distinctive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I always believed the Olympics would be an amazing experience and it didn’t disappoint. It’s with great pleasure I can check off another item from my Ultimate Life List. When I originally started my list I knew it would lead to a lot of cool experiences and the Olympics are way up there.

(Side note: I’m so committed to making sure you create your own Ultimate Life List that I have a cool gift coming for you soon.)

My trip out to Vancouver was a quick one, but I ended up cramming a lot into the trip thanks to my friends who live in the area. The first night I hooked up with my buddy and fellow Maverick member Aymen Boughanmi, plus Randy Charach and his wife, Shanna, for dinner. You could immediately sense a great energy in the town. Walking to dinner Shanna was sporting the must-have item from the Olympics – the red Canadian mittens.

It was the only thing Missy wanted me to bring back – but they were pretty impossible to find. Half my damn trip was being on the lookout for those elusive mittens.

The next morning I left Vancouver for a quick 1-day/night jaunt over to Whistler. Originally I was just going to stay in the city and watch curling that day. (Yeah I know -  curling. I figured there had to be more to it than what I could see on TV). But I got a better offer. Francis Wolffe,, one of the foreign licensees  we had on the Underground Licensing Profits MasterClass series, was actually living in Whistler for a few months and volunteered to pick me up and bring me back. Awesome!

So we left at 7am so we could get a few runs in on the mountain. Francis and I actually got to watch the men’s Super G from the slopes with Bode Miller picking up a solid Silver for the U.S.

After the event we hit the slopes and I did my best impression of Bode. I was excited when we finally took a break for some burgers and beer because I hadn’t skied the whole year and my thighs were burning. Not the same case with Francis – he used to ski 150x/year and was probably a bit bored with our runs.

Later on inside the village I found us a scarf/mitten combo that looked like bear paws. I told Francis I’d buy him a pair so I wouldn’t be the only idiot from the States wearing it.  Here’s a shot with my paws at the Whistler Sliding Center while watching skeleton.

Now, as silly as the paws are they had a lot of people asking where they could get them -- and they were warm. I loved them.

Watching skeleton was pretty wild because they let the crowd get within a few feet of the course and you can really see how fast these athletes go. Skeleton is a little like luge, but headfirst and nothing between you and the ice at 80mph except a flimsy cafeteria tray. The real sport is trying to catch the guys on camera since they whiz by in a blink of an eye and you have to anticipate when your digital camera is going to snap a shot. Here’s the best one I got after a lot of trial and error:

It looks awesome!! I actually want to try it and so far I found a 3-day school in Alberta that actually teaches you how to do this and get your skeleton license.  (Anyone want in?)

I have this crazy idea I could somehow get into the Sochi 2014 winter games back in my mother land. We’ll see.

Anyway, back at the Whistler Sliding Center there was quite a competition heating up with Canada’s Jon Montgomery holding onto first place by just a fraction of a second. Amazing, considering they do 4 runs. The place went absolutely nuts with their native son picking up an unexpected gold on home soil.

Here’s his winning run I filmed until the IOC takes it down

Later that night the athletes all came down to the CTV pavilion for interviews and I watched Jon get handed a pitcher of beer from a fan – and he immediately started chugging it! So frickin’ awesome! I loved it! Here’s a video I found of this:

We went outside to see the crowd watch Jon get interviewed by the Canadian television program and at the end they burst out in a spontaneous O’Canada. It was really cool and I even joined in:

Later that night I got the inside skinny on the elusive mittens. They were outside of Vancouver at a store called ‘Zellers’. Francis and his girlfriend where nice enough to go out of their way to make sure Missy and now all her friends got mittens. It truly was the ‘mecca of mittens’. YES!

Back in Vancouver on Saturday was the beginning of my all-hockey-all-the-time event schedule, starting with a little warm up game with Slovakia and Lativa. I didn’t really care too much about either team; however my friend and business coach Cameron Herold was only going to be in town for that one day so that was the game we picked. It was a somewhat uneventful game with Slovakia dominated the much-smaller Lativians.

After the game Cameron and I met up with 2 more guys with roots in Vancouver -- Adam & Mathew Toren from YoungEntrepreneur.com -- who also have a glossy Vancouver city mag. A great dinner at GoldFish and then we hit a few of the clubs, meeting a few more guys including Aymen & Randy again. The whole city was pretty hopping with hordes of people enjoying the celebratory spirit of the games.  Quite frankly, there might have been wilder spontaneous parties in the spirits then inside the clubs.  I finally had to say enough is enough around 3 AM to get ready for “Super Sunday” as they called in Canada.

Super Sunday was 3 huge hockey games that mirrored the last 3 Olympic gold medal games. We had Russia v. Czech at noon, U.S. v. Canada at 4:40 and Sweden v. Finland at 9 pm.

I met another friend of mine, Craig Brockie, to start the day’s festivities with Russia v. Czech. I was really excited for this game, with Alexander Ovechkin and Alexander Semin from the Caps playing for Russia along with their other line-up of superstars.

Your outfit for a big game is critical. I had my #8 Russian jersey, Capitals hat and my new favorite accessory, the blue paws. Then planning ahead I had a Team USA shirt under the Russian jersey and Swedish shirt ready afterwards.  The great thing was my paws actually fit the color schemes for all 3 teams!

I was surprised how many Washington Captials Ovechkin jerseys were floating around the arena. On the way in there was one gal who mirrored my outfit, and she was from Washington DC too so we had to get a quick pic.

Since I was born in Moscow -- and because of Ovechkin and Semin – I was definitely rooting on Russia. I don’t know what the hardcore real Russian fans made of me. I was chanting in Russian with my American accent.

It’s cool seeing how the fans get really worked up for International play. You had Czech fans with their faces painted and then you had Russians who brought the biggest damn flags I’d ever seen. This really doesn’t do it justice.

My buddy Craig wasn’t really cheering for either squad so he just wanted a good game and kept elbowing me every time the Czechs scored with the hope of going into overtime. No thank you. With the Russians losing to Slovakia in a shoot-out the other night they needed this game to move on to the quarterfinals. It would have been a huge upset for them to exit the tournament this early. Russia actually looked like they came out to play this time. The big point in the game was Ovechkin laying out Jagr in an open ice check at center ice. It was ridiculous! Here’s an animated gif for your watching pleasure:

Russia took home the ‘W’ with a 4-2 win. Then a quick change to put my Russian jersey around my waist and voila -- instant USA fan.

It was time for the biggest, most anticipated game, USA vs. Canada. It was by far the hardest ticket for me to snap up. I picked one up the day before from a guy on Craigslist. (Gotta love Craigslist – that’s how I found my apartment in Vancouver to stay in, too!)

Good news is I was in – bad news I was the only American supporter around me.

The entire stadium was a sea of red with a few smatterings for USA supporters. Serious enemy turf. The crowd was so pumped until it was stunned into silence with about 40 seconds in with the first USA goal. I almost felt bad for the home fans during the game. Even Missy was texting me during the game hoping for Canada goals.

One of our Maverick members from Buffalo, Dave Lally, is friends with the assistant coach from Team Canada, Lindy Ruff. (Actually, the coach came to the Maverick Iceland trip with us in August.) So Dave is traveling with Lindy and his wife and I meet him after the first period and he’s got a Canada jersey and hat on. Traitor!

Dave said he half stood up on the first goal and started looking to give high-fives, until he remembered how he was dressed. My blue paws were perfect for high-fives with the random US fans I saw in-between periods. I thought the Canadians would be really mean and nasty after the loss but not really. Even “Captain Canada” and “Boy Canuck” posed for pics after their loss to the U.S.

I think the Canadians probably took the cake for costumes and solidarity but the Swedes were a pretty passionate bunch too.

I gave my support to the Nordic boys in yellow and blue since Backstrom plays for the Caps. Ready for change #3 I put on my team Sweden tshirt.

In between games I hung out in a “holding area” and talked to a few Swedes. It was really incredible to hear their knowledge of the sport and to know which of their countries athletes plays for which team. They knew right away about Backstrom at the Caps, and they even remembered Calle Johanson and Bengt Gustavason.  Bengt goes way back – some serious history.

And I got the low-down on the chant I had to know in order to root for “my” team. I only got the first part of it, but it was enough to ingratiate me to my new buddies. “Heya Sveda…!”

I ended up 3-0 on the night with every team I supported winning. Maybe there’s something to this. In fact, I’ll make myself available for rent for the Gold Medal game on February 28 if you’re a serious fan and want to assure victory for your team…and I’ll bring the blue paws out too.

In just a few nights I got some really incredible highlights -- and another unique experience that’s priceless. The only thing I wished I had done different was bring the kids out but I think they were a bit too small. Maybe for Sochi in 2014. It would be a real treat to take them and my dad.

Okay, at the beginning of this post I mentioned that seeing the Olympics has been on my ‘list’ for quite awhile. And I decided to put together a resource to help you create and get more items checked off your own Ultimate Big Life List. I’ll be posting a pretty cool ebook for you shortly!

I’ve always been a fan of creating lists -- and I’m not the only one. I’ll be interviewing Ted Leonsis (former AOL exec & owner of the Capitals) shortly. He’s come out with a new book called “The Business of Happiness”, and one of the major sections is all about creating your own list…so this very good timing. Sign up here to hear it – http://www.MaverickBusinessInsider.com/happy/

And finally if you haven’t had enough here’s a montage video I put together with my trip:

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.

My buddy Dean Jackson pointed out an interesting example to me the other day that really got me thinking. There’s a big lesson here so keep your eyes peeled…

It’s about 2 very successful shows running in Vegas.

Both of them were blockbusters and entertaining sold-out audiences each and every night. Both were family-friendly and both had sterling reputations. And both even had specialized theaters built for them, named after their shows…

But that’s where the similarities end.

You see, one show got shuttered after a tragic accident on stage and the revenue drops to pretty much zilch. The other show is flourishing worldwide and is now a multi-million dollar company.

So which shows am I talking about?

Well, the first one is Siegfried and Roy. They created this amazing long running show of magic and illusion featuring their famous white tigers.  They had a lifetime gig doing their show at The Mirage in Las Vegas, until that fateful day in October of 2003, when Roy was mauled by one of his tigers.  They had made no other contingencies. Now the show closed down and their business was gone…POOF!

And that second show?

It’s the Blue Man Group. Maybe you’ve heard of them, remember the Intel ads that featured them or know them from the television show “Arrested Development”. It’s a group of 3 guys painted electric blue from head to toe, who splash paint, make sounds and splat stuff out of their mouths. It might sound a bit juvenile but audiences love them! And from a business or entrepreneurial case-study point – there are a lot of things to learn here.

The little light bulb moment came for them when Jillete Penn (part of the duo Penn & Teller) saw their show in NYC during the first month. He told them, “Oh, my God! You guys can do what Teller and I can never do! You can clone yourselves!”

They didn’t get it at first because they thought they had to be the talent.

But finally the idea dawned on them that they really could leverage what they were doing by painting other actors (who were trained by them) blue and doing another show. They started in Boston and things didn’t go smoothly because they didn’t have a system to duplicate the show. They literally had to lock themselves up in their apartment with their creative director for 3 days to write and tape record themselves going over every part of the show. The recordings were transcribed creating an operations manual and a way to systematize their performance.

Currently, their live stage shows can be seen in New York, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, Berlin, and Tokyo plus frequent tours.

When they first started they were using almost $1000 worth of Jell-O per show – their producers decided to lose that part of the show. Luckily, two of the three were working for a catering company who picked up the cost and made the Jell-O for them each week. After being featured in the Intel ads (which were shown during the Grammy Awards, the NBA playoffs and the World Series) they went from 10 shows a week at 50% capacity to 14 shows a week at 100% capacity.

But get this – right now the original 3 members of Blue Man group do not even perform – they’re busy growing their brand. They’ve ventured into all sorts of other venues including film, music, TV, education and even children’s toys. The toy development is a license to create toys based on their musical instruments. Smart! They’ve even opened their own school – the “Blue School” – for kids. Here’s an article about it from Time Magazine.

Frankly, the biggest lesson here is leverage…

Siegfried and Roy never figured out a way to get paid beyond their performance. (Yes, they got paid lavishly but they had golden handcuffs because they could never stop performing day-in and day-out.) But Blue Man group leveraged themselves by duplicating their performances and now by starting to license their creations. That means they have revenue coming in from lots of “open doors”.

Now I certainly don’t know if you’ll create the next blockbuster show in Vegas – but I’ll make you a bet you can still leverage yourself in a slightly different way without painting yourself blue.

If you’ve got any sort of info product, content, software, I.P. or even a business idea – you’ll love this! (Even if you don’t there’s a killer opportunity to stick yourself in the ‘middle’.)

You see, I’m pulling back the curtain on this weird way I’ve “Rented” my existing content to create brand NEW profit streams that require virtually zero work after they’re set-up one-time. (I’ve quietly been doing this for 3+ years now and banking 6-figures a year from it!)

http://www.UndergroundOnlineSeminar.com/licensing/

I truly believe this is going to change the way you think about your business because there are tons of ways of doing it beyond what I’ve done. In fact, I’ve personally sought these experts out because I’m going to step up what I’m doing in this area.

It’s a serious way to exponentially leverage what you’re doing already in your business and let others profit from it and keep paying you month after month.

And if you watch the presentation ’til the end there’s a special bonus linked to my upcoming Underground Online Seminar 6.

Even if you don’t think this applies to you – you can still be the ‘middle man’ or broker and bring 2 parties together. There is a significant untapped opportunity here. In fact, I would seriously pay for someone to be a broker for our content because it’s all found money!

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/