Enlightenment, Inspiration in Whistler Part 1

I just returned to my home in Phoenix, AZ from what I have to call the greatest trip I have taken in my life thus far…

Thankfully, I’m getting the “writing bug” again and feel I can start writing about some very interesting things

This is the first post of a few in this series on Whistler, as I spent over a month there and learned lessons that I am still reflecting upon and coming to a point where I can confidently share brief summaries of those lessons with others.

I’ll start from the beginning and share my journey in story format as I go along…What a journey it was indeed!

Before I left on Feb. 22nd, I was in a tough spot in my mind and with my emotions. I had so many things swirling in my mind such as “What do I want to do?”, “Who am I?”, “Where do I want to go?”…Just a few of Life’s Questions among many more during that time.

My good friends Mike Dillard and Craig Allen of Magnetic Sponsoring and www.BetterNetworker.com had invited me to go on a snowboard trip with them up to Whistler, which has been a major dream of mine for the past 8 years.

I’m a very spontaneous person by nature, so when an opportunity of this magnitude was presented to me I immediately jumped on it and then proceeded to do everything in my power to make it my reality!

I didn’t have a Passport yet…So I got one! I didn’t have a clue on which airlines flew there and how…So I figured it out! I didn’t know whether I was staying for a week or the whole month…So I just booked a one-way flight! I stayed up for over 48 hours prior to my departure just so I wouldn’t forget anything. I did end up forgetting something-my set of Eben Pagan’s Altitude DVD’s-but it wasn’t “trip-threatening”…Sorry Eben

Some VIP things I learned from my trip there was to remember to eat, sleep, and drink some water while traveling! Also, depending on where you are going, dress for the local weather there… I totally spaced all of those things and finally arrived in the Whistler Village hungry, thirsty, tired, and very cold in my Arizona attire. Lessons learned!

After growing up in Colorado and snowboarding for many years, it’s weird living in Arizona and my body still hasn’t gotten used to it. As soon as I stepped off the bus into the Whistler Village, despite being totall wiped from traveling, I felt an overwhelming sense of joy, gratitude, and sheer excitement at being in a place I have dreamed of for so long!

I didn’t care that I was hungry, or tired…I was cold at first, but then I got a sudden burst of warmth (maybe my neurochemicals?) and I just felt comfortable. I felt like I was home.

I was nearly hyperventilating as Craig and I walked through the Village lugging around my ridiculously heavy and awkward snowboard bag…Maybe it was because the bag was heavy, but I really think it was “Giddiness”…Yes, I get Giddy…

I didn’t even know what was going on around me at the time…The snowflakes were as big as my hand, it was a little windy, and there were a combination of sights, sounds, and feelings my brain has never processed before. People in bright colored ski equipment, bars hopping full of people being loud and full of laughter. The nightclubs were making the ground of the Village vibrate beneath my feet and I couldn’t feel my face…Talk about information processing overload! I’ve experienced all of those things separately, but all at once in the same vicinity was definitely new for me!

Craig and I finally made it through what’s called the Village Stroll (which should be Trek instead of Stroll) to the main bus stop to head towards our final destination of the evening which was our condo. Boy did I get some funny looks! Jeans, light t-shirt, Freerunning shoes (crazy colors), and a sweatshirt with no hood and spiked hair which was a total mess by that time. I simply smiled in amusement at my amusing of others

Finally, we made it to our stop, lugged my luggage down the hill to the condo, then up the stairs to what was almost my final resting place of the couch by then. As I was slowly fading into the cushions of the couch nearest the fireplace, Craig (being the Super Dude that he is) made me a big bowl of local Organic Louisiana Chipotle Corn Chowder and forced me to drink a few glasses of water to rehydrate. That soup was sooooo good!

After grabbing one of the many rooms available, I just dropped my stuff and collapsed on the bed with the light still on. Seeing the snow outside, feeling the warmth of the fire and hearing it crackle and pop, smelling fresh greens and soup from cooking that night, and hearing the voices and laughter of some of the coolest friends in my reality made a nice journey to my slumber that evening. All that was left was to relax, recover, and dream all night long of how amazing the coming days in beautiful Whistler BC Canada were going to be, and how each day would change my life in profound ways…

More to come…Soon

Getting Back To Business

Maybe it’s the freezing temperatures or the pure astonishing beauty of Whistler BC, Canada…Whatever “it” is, it’s motivating! I realize I have neglected my blog for sometime with the “excuse” of building my new blog site (which I still am).

Why stop posting all together? I find myself yearning to write about so many things, yet stopped myself saying. “I’ll do it when I get the new site up.”

No more excuses! I will continue writing on this site until my new one is ready to go…I just can’t contain myself anymore!

Expect to see some more posts very soon as I have quite a lot to write about Time to share!

Changes

Wow, has it been a while since I’ve written here! All for good reason though as many changes have been happening in my reality

I’ve got a great new blog I’m setting up right now and moving this one too, and I have started another mini-blog project as well…

www.CalebsGratitude.wordpress.com is what I call a Gratitude Blog that I have been playing with recently. Check it out, feel out the concept and feedback is always welcome!

I have also started working with Eben Pagan recently and have been focused on training and making many important lifestyle changes as a result. All amazing I might add!

I will be devoting more time to writing about these experiences and how they can help you and/or your business as MUCH has been learned on my end from these recent adventures of mine

I will be posting more frequently from Feb. on as Jan. is full of training etc.

Look forward to some productive posts coming out soon, and I’m very excited to getting back to writing!

Lessons Learned

I’m sitting here at my kitchen table writing this blog (this is where most of my work is done lol)…It’s been a while since my last post, but for good reason(s).

So much has happened over the past few weeks that I was overwhelmed with where to start! Then something clicked and I figured what the heck, just start somewhere! So here I am-starting to share some extraordinary experiences with you in this and future posts

I’ll start with Disaster. Yep, you read that right-Disaster. A few weeks ago I lost my life. I died. Or so I thought…

It’s comforting and scary at the same time to think that I live in Phoenix which stands for rebirth and rising from the ashes, which is what has essentially been happening to me at an accelerated speed lately!

So back to my “death”…and rebirth…

Of course it’s not as serious as you may have perceived from the wording structure I chose, but you’re still reading this far aren’t you? Good-cuz you’re going to like this, and I hope it brings up some questioning of your own situation and what you may be going through in your own respect.

A few weeks ago my laptop was stolen. Now, you may be thinking, “That sucks” or “that’s too bad” but let me share with you the extremity of the case which will then lead into some amazing lessons I learned from the whole “trauma”.

Irony-I was in the middle of a back-up when my laptop was stolen

I had agreed to take photos for a friends wedding and brought my laptop into the hotel in which the wedding was taking place to transfer photos and share them with whomever requested copies. After the ceremony a few of the people had left their cameras, purses, and other valuable items in one specific area in which a security guard and two other workers promised to keep a close eye.

We all went about 50 feet over to the tent where the reception was being held and food was being served. In the time it took to eat a plate of food, my laptop as well as 2 bottles of champagne and a friends camera all disappeared!

I went to get my laptop to show off the pictures and it was gone. Apparently, an “unwelcomed” guest (a bum off the street) waltzed into the hotel, distracted the securtiy guard and the two other workers MULTIPLE times stealing a different item each time before bolting into the unknown!

Now, when I realized my laptop was gone, I kept my cool…for about 2 minutes lol. I was furious! I’m not an aggressive person by nature but with the adrenaline pumping through my system and the “fight” aspect of my fight or flight response activated-it was game on. I asked very calmly which direction the man was seen leaving the premises and proceeded to launch as fast as I could into a full out sprint-probably faster than I have ever ran before.

I analyzed my unfamiliar surroundings of downtown Phoenix and proceeded to put myself into a “bum mentality” of a thief and ran down each street I could stopping in alleyways, businesses, and scaring the crap out of people on the street asking if they had seen this person.

Long story short-I never found the guy…but I got a great workout! In all seriousness though, let me explain why I had such an intense “life or death” reaction to what had transpired.

On that laptop was 220GB of the last 9 months of my life. Everything. Ebooks I had written, videos I had shot, edited and produced. Audios. Interviews. Swipe copies of almost every major internet marketing product launch in the past year for my personal study. Sales pages. Email Follow Ups. Forms. Legal Documents. Credit Card info. All of my personal data including passwords and bookmarks. Oh yeah, let’s not forget all of my thousands upon thousands of personal photos of all the trips I have taken in the past year, and an inconceivable amount of sentimental “stuff”.

Make sense why I flipped my lid?

So…what came from all of this? What came of this Disaster? This Trauma?

What came of this experience was some of the most profound realizations, lessons, and experiences of my life that forever changed my perception of reality, business, and personal life.

Whats the biggest lesson of them all? I won’t make you wait until the end of this post becasue I can tell you right now that I had one of the most profound lessons in Forgiveness.

Not to add insult to injury, but on top of my life being “taken”, I also endured my recent girlfriend hook up with a close friend at the same wedding

Now-back to Forgiveness! You understand what was lost, or removed from the situation-my laptop-and also a very personal pain being inflicted along with that traumatic experience-Girlfriend hooking up with close friend before my eyes-so how might I have learned a lesson in forgiveness from all of this?

Easy

After I calmed down I was left in shock. Over the course of the next few hours, I went through a lot of breathing techniques, meditation, and talking about it with friends. After I looked at the situation detached from my own emotion, I began to realize what the person was going through that pushed him to choose to steal.

I realized that it wasn’t malicious, and in all honesty was done for this person to survive rather than to “hurt me”. Once I removed myself from that “Victim” consciousness, I saw it for what it was, and began my journey into really identifying what was to be learned from all of this.

I forgave that person for what he did. As crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t be more grateful for my laptop being stolen! You see, the reason I believe that is because yeah, I lost 9 hard months of producing ideas into tangible products and my entire business content along with all of my personal sentimental data-but I essentially went through an internal growth process that takes most people years of setbacks and traumas to learn the core message of.

Also-with all that data being gone, it removed one of the largest and most detrimental things in my life right now. It removed YEARS of distraction from my life.

Not only that, but now I have an opportunity to start anew! A fresh start with a new perspective on reality, business, and life in general.

A wiser outlook so to speak

I have also helped numerous people in my life through their own traumatic experiences personal or otherwise from my exercise in awareness and forgiveness. I have gotten feedback from people that produces a feeling no money can buy nor data can match

When I spoke with people after the fact so many doors of opportunity appeared, which would have never been available otherwise! My relationship with certain people deepened, and new partnerships were formed. One of my favorite things from all of this is the fact that now I go about my life in such a different way, with more Emotional Control than I have ever had before which allows me to look at more situations objectively and unbiased. I can also share that mentality with others curious about it.

I could write for pages and pages on all of the other lessons that came of this experience, but Forgiveness is the one I wanted to hare with you today.

If you are going through something in your life right now-business or otherwise-attempt to practice what I call “Engaged Detachment”. Stop playing the role of “Victim” and look at the situation from outside of your personal emotions. This is one of the true Keys to Business Success.

To be successful in any business you must approach your marketing and business tasks with an unemotional mentality. Big business is done by the numbers-if the numbers work, the deal gets done. If they don’t, you move on. As soon as you bring emotion into the mix, you have opened Pandora’s Box. Smart and successful business people are in control of themselves and their emotions when it comes to selling, partnering, and marketing.

You can also apply this mentality to your personal life. For example-I could have reacted many different ways to my girlfriend doing what she did, but instead I chose what I thought was what I call the “Most Heroic Probability” in that given situation.

I didn’t get angry, nor did I let the pain of the situation sway my demeanor or the way I treated others. I simply accepted what was happening, removed myself from it to observe from a perspective of what lessons are to be learned, and respectfully ended my interaction with her from thereafter.

I allowed myself to go through the emotions involved instead of stuffing them deep inside or thinking negatively or being aggressive towards anyone. That doesn’t serve me, and it definitely does not serve anyone else! The best part-I’m now completely free of any attachment to her which in turn allows for somebody even more amazing to step into my life when the time is right

Alright, so I brought up a heavy subject here, and I do hope you distilled something from what I have been through recently to apply to something you may be going through now, or will remember if something similar comes up in your life

I have some AMAZING adventures to share over the next few days, so expect to see a “rush” of blog posts sharing my experiences and ideas/strategies you can apply to your marketing to increase business and deepen your relationships with customers, clients, prospects, or partners

That’s all for right now-make sure to check back soon for some great stuff!

Split Testing in Real Life

A friend and I were talking after an awesome Social Media event we both attended this weekend called PodCamp AZ. (#podcampaz on twitter)…We were talking about the great time we had, the wonderful people we met, and some of the things we observed when I brought up something that I thought was very interesting about the whole event.

It’s what I call “Split Testing in Real Life” and it is exactly what it sounds like! I don’t know if I’m the only person that does this, but every time I mention it people are like, “Wow, I never thought of doing that…I’ll have to try it!”.

Let me frame it in a better context so it makes perfect sense and you can choose to apply this technique if you are so inclined

Split testing is the practice of taking a marketing piece or an idea of some sorts that you make 2 versions of, and test them against each other. For example: If I use Google AdWords to advertise online, then I must write an ad for it to show when people search. If I wanted to split test that ad, I would simply write the same ad, but change just the headline. It’s the same ad, but only one thing is different.

The whole goal of split testing is to really see what works best for you and your business. If you have a webpage with a blue background, put another version of the same site up in red, and see which one converts better and “Voila!” you have yourself a split test!

Now, what do you do with the results of a split test? This is the fun part…Whichever ad, or color on your website etc. works better, converts higher, and just plain performs best you keep. Throw the other one out as you don’t need it! Now, make ANOTHER ad (or use another color), and change one different thing from the ad that is what you would call the “master”. Put the two ads up again and see which performs better. Rinse, Repeat

Now that you have a decent understanding of what split testing is, I am going to share how I use it in real life and how you can too!

My test: How do people treat me at a seminar or conference based solely on how I am dressed when I meet them for the first time? The results were kind of shocking…

Whenever I attend an event in the internet marketing world, or any public event with networking involved, I always “dress up” for the first day or two. That way, the rest of the time I can dress down without affecting another persons opinion towards me in a negative way.

I decided to switch up my game a bit and try something new…Reverse that process!

I was curious about how anchoring a first impression is at all times. Trust me, it is more important than you think lol

I chose to wear something comfortable to this event first, and then “dress up”. This is what happened: Even though my personality had not changed one bit, my hair was the same and the only difference was in my attire, opinions that were formed on the first impression were considerably different from previous events.

I dressed in a nice fitted Tshirt, black cargo shorts, and my totally awesome Le Parkour Freerunning shoes that are blue, green, white, purple and black

It was interesting to see peoples reactions to me when I spoke about the industry, mentioned some big name friends I have, and the caliber at which I teach. They treated me like a kid! They ignored me for the most part, didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and walked by without a second glance like I didn’t exist even though they had just met me 2 minutes prior. I have to mention that the women who attended also treated me like a “nobody” at the event and “shooed” me away lol. It’s OK…Really, I’m secure…:-P

Then it got even better…

The next day, I get all fancy dressed up with fitted Guess jeans, a very nice Oakley dress shirt, and some awesome and stylish pointy shoes that are studded and leather tribal design on them (they are my Rockstar shoes). Boy did I notice a difference!

As soon as I showed up, everyone treated me completely differently! I had numerous people ask what time I was speaking at the event and what I would be teaching! The response was considerably-and more positively-different. The ladies took notice, and of course they flirted more with me instead of ignoring me. People payed sharp attention when-no joke-I spoke about the SAME exact thing I spoke with them about the previous day lol.

When we went out the first night, it was just me and a couple friends eating, and we had no luck finding a group to “click” with. The next night at dinner, we were at a large table of people having a great time, laughing, and treating me like someone of importance!

Human beings fascinate me…

It was quite interesting to see the massive shift in social behavior of an entire group of people based on how I was dressed. The fact that we were at a Social Media/Web 2.0 “Unconference” (which totally rocked if I didn’t already say) made it even more ironic! That was the single most interesting thing for me out of all of this: to observe the social psychology of a group who thrived off of social proof and social communities online. It’s amazing how people judge you on so many levels off of their first glance upon you.

What did I accomplish here with this “Real Life Split Test”? I found out that I was doing things the right way to begin with and that I will from now on dress up the first day or two of an event to solidify a professional, stylish, and attractive anchor to me in another attendees’ mind right from the start

Then, when they have that positive, professional, stylish, and attractive anchor of who I am in their minds, when I dress down over the rest of the event, their positive views of me are amplified with them subconciously feeling more at ease by me “trusting” them enough to be comfortable with them so soon. Powerful stuff here…A little heavy, but extremely powerful!

So-how can you split test in real life? Seriously, think about it and come up with something you can try today no matter how little it may be. You could try a new route home you have always been curious about to see if it is faster or not. You could go to a mall (or even a Wal-Mart) dressed one way, and then go back (even the same day!) and be dressed completely differently. You can read a book first one morning, then read email first the next, and see how the rest of your day unfolds because of that change. There are soooo many ways you can do this, and it is so much fun to analyze the results and tweak things here and there. You will become more productive, more intellectually stimulated, and in turn more creative the more you play with this idea.

Go on! Get out there and start split testing in your life! You will have some confusing yet interesting results, probably have a few laughs, and will definitely learn a few things along the way I know I did, and my friends that have adopted this idea already have had the same experience.

Happy Split Testing in Real Life, and make sure to post things you have tried and your results in a comment on this post! This is so much fun, and I look forward to hearing some interesting stories lol