So I’m sitting here on my plane – free upgrade to first class, by the way - and decided to make a new blog entry.

Cancun was absolutely AMAZING.

It was the best trip ever. Jaime and I went for 2 weeks, and the trip was broken up into 3 parts. We got to one hotel for a few days where we partied like rockstars, then we went to Club Med for a seminar for a week, and then we went to another hotel where we just relaxed and settled down.

I’ll forever hold the trip as one of my best experiences ever, but here are some of my main takeaways:

1. Intuition trumps logic every time. I don’t know why I’ve fought so hard against this for such a long time, but it’s really true. Whenever I go with my gut instinct, things work out far better than what I “think” should happen.It’s true in business, with relationships, with everything.

It used to be hard for me to justify things on emotion - “But it just feels right” - but I don’t care anymore. And I feel like most successful people agree, based on the conversations I’ve had and listened to.

2. I will never again say I’m not sure about “spirituality”. Some of the experiences I had over the weeks were absolutely mind-boggling. The way things came together for me, the experiences I went through, and the growth that came out of two weeks time… just incredible. There’s no way there isn’t something bigger out there, it’s just not possible.

3. Relaxation is AWESOME. I didn’t have the Internet for a week at Club Med (there was a storm that blew it out) and my air card wasn’t working, so I had to learn how to relax.

That might sound easy, but I’m normally a very go-go-go person. In fact, I even wrote down what relaxation felt like in my journal. But I really realized on the trip that not only is relaxation a fun feeling, but when you actually stop and take time to THINK and LISTEN TO YOURSELF – that’s when everything comes together.

So many successful people say to “center yourself”, or “meditate”, or “quiet the noise”, and I never wanted to stop long enough to do that. It’s absolutely mindboggling, though, once you do it… how much you just inherently know.

The more I learn, the more I realize that the path to success is incredibly counterintuitive. (Counterintuitive to logic, that is – definitely not counterintuitive to your intuition.)

Guess that’s it for now. I did learn some good business stuff, too, but I just shared the much more important part.

After a trillion tries of this video thing, I decided I’m going to look like a dunce no matter what. And I’m okay with that:

I’m in a few masterminds, and I adore them all. Leveraging the expertise of other people = incomparable.

I made this “How To Run A Mastermind” checklist a year or so ago, and completely forgot about it. Nathan Gilder asked me for it today, and when I gave it to him, he said it was pretty valuable. Hopefully it helps someone else too:

How To Effectively Run A Mastermind

-Decide on type of MasterMind (supportive or paid)

-Determine purpose

-Figure out who you want in the MasterMind – what types of qualifications do you want people to have, how much diversity do you want, and how many people.

-Find members. There are a lot of ways to do this. Some ideas are to ask people, place ads, go on forums, look at social organizations, work, ryze.com, Yahoo! Groups, meetup.com, or save your time and use the “Search” function on MasterMind Zone.

-When interviewing people, make sure that people exhibit certain qualities. For example, you want to make sure that you have people that are “take action” types, and not people who are the negative “victim” type. You also should look for people who are eager to improve.

-Survey members, decide what everyone can bring to the table

-Decide how long each session should last, allotting for socializing and break time. Break it down by how long each members gets to talk (including the time that they receive feedback). It is very imperative to stick to this schedule, or people get frustrated that meetings consistently run too long, and there is not a clear focus.

-Decide when and where to meet

-Either make a leader, or opt to rotate leadership. Somebody needs to be accountable for watching time, relaying messages if people miss a meeting, and contacting people if there’s a change.

-Set rules and goals during the first meeting. One common rule is that everything said during the meeting needs to be confidential. Other rules are to not be able to shoot down ideas, have an open mind, be absent or late too frequently, or not achieve states goals consistently. Decide on consequences for rules. Everybody should also identify a long-term goal on the first meeting.

-Encourage people to share “brain food” – books, music, movies, quotations, websites, etc.

-Set timer as each person talks, carefully making sure that everybody talks only as long as they have set for them.

-When people give feedback, it needs to be brief and to the point so that everybody can give feedback according to time allotments. Sometimes feedback won’t be needed though, as a person might decide to simply ask to be held accountable for something by the next meeting.

-Be the one to go the extra mile. Someone has to lead before others will follow.

-At the end of the meeting, ask if anybody needs accountability until the next meeting (perhaps they need a call from another member to keep them in check).

-In future meetings, make sure that everybody gives a brief update of their progress from last meeting.

-Review rules periodically so that everyone follows. The biggest “crime” usually is people talking past their allotted time period.

-Once established, everyone has to vote unanimously on new members.

Remember that contest I told you I planned on winning?

…I won!

I an the proud new owner of a MacBook air, an iPod Touch, the Flip Camera, a Nintendo DS Lite, $1500 in advertising… and more.

And dude, I totally found out about the contest 1.5 months too late. But… I “worked smarter, not harder”… and quickly got stuff done via other people.

Love it! 

I don’t have too much time to blog, but it was killing me that my last post was a promotional one.

Annnyway, at Glen Hopkins’ seminar in Seattle. It’s great! Lots of awesome people, and I finally got to meet Glen Smith in person.

Here’s a picture that Bob “The Teacher” Jenkins took of me and Rebecca Kepple:

…But there’s an awesome contest going on at Webmaster Talk.

They’re doing this big campaign to get more content virally, and there are some awesome prizes up for grabs:

The Contest Prizes - More than $25,000 in Prizes

 This is what they are:

1. A beautiful new Macbook Air laptop from ClickBooth valued at $1,800.00!
2. A Professional version Shopping Cart solution from Interspire valued at $995.00!
3. $500 cash in a Max Bounty affiliate network account awaits you!
4. Another $500 in the form of a Text Link Ads gift certificate should help with your marketing efforts!
5. How about another Apple product, the iPod Touch from Rocket Profit….wow!
6. Another $250 cash in a Pepperjam Network account will make you smile!
7. Sure would be nice to have some custom T-shirts printed for your headline website, right? Well, Ndesigns is going to do that for you! This is 24 Custom Printed Shirts (color T’s, 3-4 color printing, one-sided).
8. The hottest new camera for blogging, The Flip, is provided by AdValiant!
9. Speaking of blogs, the MOST AMAZING paid theme ever is now yours from Revolution Theme and it isn’t just one, but the complete multi-pack!
10. To help you relax that hard working brain of yours, we close the package out with a Nintendo DS Lite from RevResponse!

Anyway, I plan on winning. I’ll make a post again soon talking about how awesome the Macbook is. Since the contest ends on May 13, expect the post soon.

I LOVE my new layout.

A little less than a year ago, I put out my first product, Top Secret Riches (do NOT judge my sales letter writing abilities by that!)

One of the people who bought it was Andrew Wee. We ended up in email dialog, and have been friends ever since.

He’s really an amazing guy. Once, out of nowhere, he made a blog post about me. Completely made my day.

Another time, he did an interview with me. I haven’t even told him this yet, but I met a great guy on Venice Beach a few weeks ago… gave him my blog URL… and he listened to that interview. Now, this guy is a stand-up comedian, but he was so inspired by the interview that he immediately went and created a bunch of blogs. 50, to be exact. Considering that he had NO Internet Marketing experience (and I don’t know if he planned on having any) and is now making money, in part to the interview (he says it’s directly because of it)…  craziness.

That’s completely thanks to Andrew. He had to talk me into it, because I really didn’t see myself as successful enough to be on an interview at the time.

He also invited me into his incredible mastermind, which is full of brilliant people that I’m honored to meet with every other Tuesday.

Here’s my newest reason why Andrew’s so stellar:

A few days ago, I mentioned to him that I wanted to enroll in Strategic Coach at my friend Chad’s recommendation. This got us talking about life purpose, and I told him how I was feeling a little stagnant.

He recommended a few things to me.

First, he told me about 2 articles by Po Bronson. First, he mentioned Do We All Have A Story and then Tao Of Dough. Those are both fantastic articles that I really enjoyed.

He also told me about Randy Pausch. Apparently he was in mainstream media for a while, but I had never heard of him. Randy was a 47 year old college professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was told that he only had 3-6 months to live, and decided to give his last college lecture on everything he had learned in his life. Basically he talked about how he was able to accomplish his childhood dreams, how he helped others, and then he talked about how others could meet their dreams too.

The talk was ridiculously inspiration, and I got a lot out of it. Even though it was over an hour and videos make me insanely restless, I was captivated the entire time. I really recommend watching it if you haven’t already.

I was going to mention some of my favorite takeaways, but I have 4 pages of notes and I’m sure your experience will be different.

When (not if) you like it,  go thank Andrew for generously sharing it.

..Especially considering Stephen Dean’s blog entries.

Until then, here are some updates.

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Thank you for the Toastmaster’s comments! I really appreciate them, and to John - you should totally do it.

People there are warm, encouraging, and they want to see you succeed.

I had my first speech a couple weeks ago and it went GREAT. I got awesome feedback… the only thing I was told to work on was the fact that I talk super-quickly.

I kind of like talking quickly… :)… but I took the feedback and used it in my prepared joke the next week, and they said I delivered that with great timing.

Overall, not perfect yet, but definitely learning. And it’s been SO nice to surround myself with those kinds of people.

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Random: I’m taking an improv class on Saturdays soon. That’ll help with my extemporaneous Toastmaster’s speeches, and just be an overall awesome thing to do.

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I was talking to one of the guys at Toastmaster’s about the Myers-Briggs testing, and “feelers” versus “thinkers”.

I was telling him that Myers Briggs labels me as a feeler, but I feel like I’m more of a thinker.

Anyway, he asked if he could give me feedback. When he did, he pointed out that I always say “I feel” versus “I think” (i.e. “I feel like I’m more of a thinker.)

I thought that was pretty interesting. He says that within a few minutes, you can usually tell which one someone is, just by listening to how they start those opinion sentences.

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Last random thing, then I’m going to make a new blog entry and post-date it since I seem to only do blog posts every once in a while…

Jaime and I are both going to be here in June (if you decide to go, let me know!), so we’ve been super-conscious about eating healthy so we look good for the pool.

Since we’re doing calorie cycling, we had a cheat day on Thursday. We were so excited that we actually had our waiter take a picture of us eating the “bad” stuff:

The picture came out blurry, but here it is anyway:

Alright, time to make a new blog entry.