A few weeks ago I wired over my deposit to officially claim my “Pioneer” reservation spot of #53 on Virgin Galactic. Here are my welcome letters:

That actually makes me #153 because there are 100 fully paid “Founders” who each put in $200k to hold their spots. I actually got a little push from one of these founders, Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, who was my coach during the Zero G flight we did in Florida in January with the MasterMind members.

She got me hooked up with the Virgin Galactic group and told them I was serious about signing up. Missy had some big-time reservations about me going up (or more importantly coming down safely) and spending the money for this. I can’t control the safety part but I told her we’d do a promotion or create a product to pay for it. I was really on the fence about if I wanted to put up a $175k deposit as a Pioneer or just $20k and go after #1000. Well, I talked to my friend, Cindy Cashman, and she inspired me. Cindy and her new fiance, Mitch, are planning on being the first couple wedded in space on a different company other than Virgin. She’s such a fun person to talk to about this kind of stuff. (She told me about his idea for a space wedding before she even had a guy in her life)

Since my marketing brain doesn’t turn off - I wanted to point out how Virgin does a real nice job of their first contact after the sale. Check out this unique package I get after my confirmation. The box is like 4 feet x 5 feet (disregard Zak’s books in the corner of pic).

And inside is a huge book filled with awe-inspiring photos of the space flight experience. It’s pretty cool. Actually it reminds me of 21st century version of Robert Ringer’s famous “Earth” business card/brochure he talked about in his best-seller “Winning Through Intimidation”. To give you an idea of the book size I placed one of my magazines next to it. This is an over-sized magazine so it gives you a little perspective.

On the front cover of the book is an intricate history of flight, aviation and space flight, almost making you feel like you are part of a legacy.

A little brief background in case you haven’t followed the story of Virgin Galactic…they’ve licensed the design of “SpaceShipOne” from Burt Rutan, who won the “Ansari X Prize” in 2004. The prize of $10,000,000.00 was for a spaceship to complete 2 flights within 2 weeks. If “Ansari” rings a bell with you it’s because Anousheh Ansari was the first female private citizen to go up in space. Hopefully, if all goes well, I should go up in the first year Virgin Galactic operates in 2009. Here’s a video that shows what the flight experience on Virgin will be like. I showed this on DVD to my Father-in-law and he gave me his typical reply to my trips, “You know something - you’re nuts!”. I’m sure lots of people agree but I’m incredibly excited.

As a Pioneer we are invited to special functions with other Virgin flyers and I’ll keep you guys posted on the events and what happens. As some of you know, Richard Branson, is really one of my biggest business heroes because of his sucess and the his sense of adventure.

It’s truly an amazing time we live in!