Ha! I just wanted to use that as a title for a post since I love the song by Marc Cohn and I just got back from Memphis last night. When the song comes on it’s almost like the Seinfeld episode when ‘Desperado’ comes on and Elaine is shushed by her boyfriend.  Okay not quite that bad but I do like the song.

Anyway I was in Memphis for our 7-figure Mastermind group meeting’s field trip. This was the first year we did a ‘field trip’ and it really worked out well.

Now as a tourist I was supposed to go see the ducks at the Peabody hotel. I thought it was pretty damn funny since hundreds of people show up everyday to watch a bunch of ducks. Every morning at 11am the ducks come down in the elevator from the penthouse and get into the hotel fountain to swim around for the day. And at 5 pm they reverse the process and go back up to their penthouse.

The story is that in 1932 the general manager and his buddy came back from a hunting trip a bit hammered and decided it would be funny to have some of the ducks they were using as decoys left in the fountain of their hotel. Surprisingly the ducks were still there the next day when they woke up and were causing a positive stir among guests. So a few years later – they hired an animal trainer to actually train them to march down a red carpet and into their fountain.

Here’s a little video I shot of the world-famous fowls:

And here are a couple pics of the ducks on one dapper Tim Schdmit from the MasterMind group. (Watching those ducks most have done something for me because I ate duck breast that night with a nice Pinot Noir.)

The Peabody ducks are a perfect example of a marketing gimmick that keeps getting people interested enough to take about when they go home, when tourists show up, etc. The entire hotel’s identity is closely tied to the ducks. You really don’t need to create anything that crazy but just enough to be really different. I mean how many hotels do you know with trained ducks?

I didn’t get a chance to hit Graceland but Mastermind member Perry Belcher (our esteemed host) did get us into another Memphis institution “The Rendezvous”. This is a world-famous place known for their ribs I absolutely love BBQ and it was delicious! I thought it was pretty funny that they only served Michelob but Perry told me they specially selected it to enhance the pork – but I’m not sure. Here’s part of our group experiencing this “perfect complimentary” beer:

For me, the “The Rendezvous” means something else since I went to school at Maryland.  It was called the “Vous” and you had to have to special Vous shoes since the place had uneven floors with huge pools of beer (and other various & sundry liquids). Everyone would dance on the tables and it would be pretty much out of control! I believe Playboy magazine event ranked it as a “Top Ten” college bar. There also used to be one morning called “Elbow Room” when they’d open up at 5 AM right before graduation and pitchers of beer were either a quarter or a dollar. I can’t remember. Then everyone would start pouring them on each other’s heads. For some reason the MasterMind guys weren’t into this tradition.

I’d like to share some big takeways and secrets from the meeting like how one member is getting 10x the traffic to his site using an overlooked technique that’s completely out of favor. Or how another member designed his membership site to ‘repay’ each subscriber but it really sets up another payday. And one of my favorites from this meeting – the simple ‘forced continuity’ that’ll add an extra 7 figures per month to one member’s business…but I can’t!

The meetings are completely confidential and members even sign NDAs but I might be able to get a few nuggets out in future Underground Secret Society newsletters if these guys let me. We’ll see. (Note: I currently run 2 MasterMind groups  – a 6 Figure and 7 Figure group. There is a waitlist for both groups.)

There was going to be another chapter to my Memphis trip – my HALO skydive but I ended up canning it since it would mean being gone from Missy for 3 more days. She’d been alone with Zak and Zoe and it’s pretty tough for her especially since our little princess isn’t sleeping. Here’s a new pic of her:

  Don’t let her smile fool you – she’s just luring you in

(I’m not wimping out. I’ll be rescheduling for Spring 08 and maybe Tim Ferriss won’t come up with some lame excuse again so he’ll join me.) ;

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Fun, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.